Wednesday 11th April 2018
I was in work today (on my holidays...) and brought my son in with me for the day. He happily read books, played games, chatted with me etc. in between my helping students.
One of the things that I focused on today was urgency.
I notice that even when faced with a deadline looming closer and closer, many students will not take heed and speed up, and may even slow down as they let themselves get increasingly distracted. This may be a strategy to dodge feelings of stress and pressure, and some of them are so laid back that you'd never know that they had a deadline at all lol.
It would be easy for me to say that I live my life with a sense of urgency, and that I get things done, and I'd be fibbing. I am really only dimly aware of my need for urgency in my life, and I often let myself get distracted by gratifying experiences.
The truth is that I will not live forever. In fact, as Henry Rollins succinctly put it in his song 'Shine': "If you think you've got one hundred years to mess around: you're wrong." Freudians will suggest that at some point in my life I will begin to live in accordance with my 'death instinct'. Certainly I am growing my awareness of my own mortality; especially as my life enters the realms of age that I used to regard as so far into the distant future, I wondered if I would ever get there.
But 47 is the new 18.
Does that sentiment serve me though? Far better to look my age in the eye and measure my time, use it ever more wisely and with increasing urgency. Tempus fugit, as Faustus would say. And he was granted huge powers, and chose instead to fritter them and his remaining time away on distractions. It is later than you think. It is later than I think. It is later when I think. If I think at all about it.
I squeeze what I can out of each day; yet I could wring more life out of my life if I so chose.
I congratulate myself on some degree of self-discipline; yet I indulge in guilty pleasures that I feel I deserve.
And all the while I am not where I want to be yet.
If I were to die tonight, I would have enjoyed a most wonderful life, full of amazing depth and detail, to be cherished and thankful for. Yet I would be at the same time unfulfilled; I have not yet done all that I have set myself to do.
My mission here is not yet complete. I pray for the time to complete it; and the wakefulness to stay conscious and get it done; and the sense to not fall asleep at the wheel as I travel through my own lifespan.
My students teach me many things about my life and my own self, not least that the things I see in them I see because I am conscious of that part of myself. That the things I find bugging me about their attitudes, behaviours and outcomes only bug me because they are the things that I like the least about my own self.
I catch glimpses of moments where I appear to see myself clearly, mirrored in the lives of others. There are flashes of purposefulness where I think I see the path ahead leading to what I must do to get where I want to go.
But life can be so distracting; the senses get so easily filled with noise and hubbub. Often very lovely and joyous, vibrant and alive. And not always leading me in the direction I would choose if I took responsibility for my life.
Sometimes life seems like a straight up choice between a hard head and a soft heart. I so much want to have both, and it is hard to strike the balance. The hard head knows what needs to be done. The soft heart knows that all of that stuff is nothing without the love of myself and the people around me on the journey.
It so easily feels like the dream described by Calderon (this translation is from the operatic version of his play, 'Life's A Dream'):
"We live, while we see the sun,
Where life and dreams are as one;
And living has taught me this,
Man dreams the life that is his,
Until his living is done.
The king dreams he is king, and he lives
In the deceit of a king,
Commanding and governing;
And all the praise he receives
Is written in wind, and leaves
A little dust on the way
When death ends all with a breath.
Where then is the gain of a throne,
That shall perish and not be known
In the other dream that is death?
Dreams the rich man of riches and fears,
The fears that his riches breed;
The poor man dreams of his need,
And all his sorrows and tears;
Dreams he that prospers with years,
Dreams he that feigns and foregoes,
Dreams he that rails on his foes;
And in all the world, I see,
Man dreams whatever he be,
And his own dream no man knows.
And I too dream and behold,
I dream I am bound with chains,
And I dreamed that these present pains
Were fortunate ways of old.
What is life? a tale that is told;
What is life? a frenzy extreme,
A shadow of things that seem;
And the greatest good is but small,
That all life is a dream to all,
And that dreams themselves are a dream."
The TL;DR is that I am not yet focused on the daily activities I need to get me to where I want to be. As if I am partly living somebody else's life by mistake instead of the life I want to choose.
What's coming up ahead for me is a zone where I will be paring down my focus until I either a) get focused on my goal and take the steps and get there, or b) give up / get distracted / fall asleep again and if I am lucky wake up in a few years time to have this same conversation with myself all over again.
You know which one I would prefer to have as my outcome!
Another thing that came my way today was courtesy of @zuckerzombie, and that was 'agreements' and how they are perhaps a better process to live by than 'expectations'. I heartily agree (without meaning to pun) and I am thinking over a future post about agreements and the role that they play in my life. For now: I have no ongoing agreements at present. I have in the past used agreements to massive effect in my life. It seems odd that I have given myself so much time off with them - avoided them even - when they are always so effective for me. So I know which direction to head in next, then :-) Thank you, @zuckerzombie :-)
Writing
No fiction today (I did write background notes, but no 'front of house' words for the story). Instead I wrote some product - a page for a future PLR product on survival / prepping. I'm still riding high from the writing that I did over the last few days. I enjoyed the notes today - I can already see the fertile parts that are going to surely find their way into the story.
Health
I walked more today - this always seems to happen while I am at work. Although HIIT is much more effective for my fitness and weight loss, I can't help but enjoy the knowledge that I walked over 10,000 steps today. I actually danced my way through the last 800 :-) Tomorrow we are all heading out on the expedition pre-walk risk assessment check, so I will be interested to see what my step count looks like at the end of tomorrow.
Steemit Goals
Not such a huge day for commenting today and I did read a lot of posts too. It still felt like a good day on Steemit though :-) I enjoyed reading about a number of things that people posted, and digging through older posts I came across this one from @revisesociology that I thought was apt to curate today:
I am not focusing on status; I am not focusing on rewards for posting or curating; I am only focusing on the benefit to my self that comes from posting and commenting daily. I guess it's about as close to an 'agreement' with myself as I can get without actually have one. :-)
I'm getting there anyways, and today was just one more step in that right direction. I'll be charting my progress as I go and we'll see what works and what does not work for me. And hopefully, some of what I learn along the way will be useful to some of you, too.
Peace be with you all xxxx
Hey @powerfulwonders, thank you very much for mentioning me in your post, I feel so honered;-) I really enjoy reading your high quality posts and it's obvious that you are a good writer as you can clearly articulate your thoughts and have a talent for choosing the right words;-) Besides that I can relate to many of your thoughts. The voice of my ego telling me stories about how my life should be and that I am behind my life goals etc. often keeps me from feeling happy in the now and in this sense constantly postpones my happiness into the future. Also the problem with tracking the progress of my goals is that I can get really caught up in outcomes that I don't have much control over and I often don't recognize progress because perfectionism warps my vision. Often "accountability" is not getting me where I want to be. After all the reason why we want the things we aspire is because we think they will bring us some variation on happiness/peace/love/contentment etc. Therefore I concentrate on measuring my progress by the degree of self-compassion I can practice when I inevitably fall short of my "over-the-top-expectations". Letting go of measuring my worth as a human by external barometers (approval, weight, success etc.) is at first disorienting and frightening but it frees me up to be responsible (able to respond to myself) in the truest sense. To accept myself just as I am but still move towards change that makes my experience even better I practice some forms of awareness practice like meditation, journaling etc and focus on doing micro-actions with full awareness. Also I stuck a post-it note on my mirror with the message "What, if nothing is wrong?" Hope this helps you a little bit;-)
Such a fantastic and thoughtful comment @zuckerzombie thank you!! I'm so glad that something I posted has resonated with you in these ways. It's an ongoing conversation - with you, with me - and I get clearer about what is actually going on the more I am willing to open up and talk about it like you just have in your comment. So thank you!
In the grand tradition (well, mine anyway) of 'taking responsibility' I am going to add that when I feel that accountability is not getting me where I want to be, I have an opportunity to step back and think about how I am using accountability to create the outcomes so far, and how I might use it differently in the future to change and refine my outcomes into something closer to what I want.
I often don't see the issues in myself, or even in my own writing, and I often do see myself in someone else or in their words. What you've written here is immensely helpful to me :-)
And I love 'What if nothing is wrong?' and I think I will be adopting that into my accountability bag of tricks, if that's OK?
Many thanks!!! :-)