So one of the things that I am trying hard to do during my intense amounts of downtime is to NOT think too much about the future. After all, as one of my gurus (yes, I have to use that word just to irritate him) will remind me constantly - we could all be dead tomorrow. A truly Buddhist perspective that I haven't quite fully taken on yet, but am doing my best at letting in.
My "question of the day... and night..." (because it doesn't just plague me during the daytime) is "what shall I do with this precious time that has been give to me?" Yeah, yeah, we are all asking this question, I know. But then I got to thinking, well, are we all asking this question, or am I just so obsessed with what could be that I am wasting away the time I have in front of me?
I realize that the times I most often live in the "present" is when I have a project in front of me - a project almost always a theater or being in some other way insignificant to the general population. I have had this recent obsession with "success" but in the end, I am not motivated by the time of fame/fortune/influence that comes from being a doctor/lawyer/political figure/etc.
I do want some sort of a normal life where I can just be me - which has always included a mix of so many unrelated interests - theatre, physical activity (martial arts, biking, for example), intellectual pursuits, and good old fashioned brain-rotting (normally through watching movies). So, after years of driving myself crazy, I am hoping that I am coming full circle to a person that I was almost a decade ago, who actually kept up with all these things, without really caring what my life was "worth" in the end.
I am pretty sure someone more famous than I has said something to the effect of this: as long as you can be authentically who you are in any given moment, it's all going to work out. (I assume the former works well in the eyes of God, too, if you are not so maligned a character).
Well... please drop a line with your thoughts. I'd love to hear back.
Cheers!
4 comments:
Wow--it seems like Edward Abbey (I almost wrote "Albee") has a good enough answer for me!
You must have down time if you've resorted to your blog! (smile).
I have an idea--an in depth ethnographic report on Davidson and surrounding area, complete with photos and verbatim reportage (which you then promptly submit to the public scrutiny availed by your blog) of people you randomly meet, hail, run down, or help carry their groceries to their cars. Or else, do what I'm doing, committing Poe's The Raven to memory, and sitting in my chair, otherwise exciting my thoughts brooding upon tappings!
Fantastic idea, Joe... It is time to start committing poems, sonnets, and soliloquies to memory!
Rime of the Ancient Mariner?
:-)
Impossible to respond adequately here, but I think you hit on a lot of concerns common to humans - maybe particularly of our age and culture (not to belittle your thoughts, just to sympathize). Here are some possibilities. It is most important, in your brief time on earth to 1. be happy (e.g. fulfill yourself) 2. make others happy (e.g. lend service, make the world better, healthier, etc, not just the humans).
Hm. Having narrowed it down to those two, I'm not actually sure what is left. Some very selfless (or compassionate?) people are able to make no distinction between those to things. I've always been a little concerned about myself, honestly, because I'm able to view them as separate, which I feel is a shame. In retrospect I see my life has veered back and forth between prioritizing each of those over the other, sometimes for years at a time. I'm confident that my high school years were the only time I felt truly committed to sacrificing myself to the world and that was also the period everybody around me was least happy with me. How about that!! And it makes so much sense, too.
I, too, feel anxious when I think of how much I love life and of how overwhelmingly beautiful it is and of how quickly it goes by, and I want to make sure I enjoy it enough. One silly thing I try to do is to write a detail about the day, every day, once it is over. Just something I noticed very closely and appreciated. The chicory along the roadside has succumbed to winter; the spider spinning a fresh web outside my front door this morning; Muley taking baby bites of her apple; passing a stationary doe and fawn while pedaling hard and fast up a long steep hill.
But I've also been coming to realize that some of the things I always considered my great faults and tried to deny for years might actually just be pieces of my soul and worthy of direction rather than erasure. And this has made me feel better about life, too, because I feel more genuine, and like I can be happier myself. So what if I'm filled with fire? As long as I don't burn anybody up, isn't it okay to be fire?
The greatest advice I think anybody every gave me was "be gentle with yourself."
But that's just the school I'm of. (Read here Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese.")
As for how to do the #1 or #2 mentioned above, that's a personal quest, I guess, and yes, we may each be dead tomorrow. I've found the most satisfaction on the nights I lay down after a day of hard, investing work or creation (e.g. digging a garden bed), adrenaline rising activity (biking some hills), and relation to my surroundings (herding with Muley, a good talk with a friend, or looking very closely at plant, noticing, maybe, or piece of wood, or a bug, or trees -- something that brings me closer). Feeling as though I'm learning something, improving something. All of these things, in themselves, are best as acts of gratefulness, appreciation, love, noticing (awareness, presence).
See, selfish me, that ideal day doesn't include anything like "helping my elderly neighbor prune her roses." But who am I now? A single person taking care of herself. My life is fantastically individualistic right now. I imagine it wont' be forever.
Maybe Joe can insert here the great prayer printed in the forepages of Zorba The Greek...
In honor of Dr. Bradshaw, I must correct myself to say "on the nights I LIE down" -- not lay.
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