i mostly think about life, and all those big questions everyday.... and i'll be honest - it's exhausting. to continuously re-evaluate your life. wondering when will be the time to change something, most things, nothing. when you will know if it's right, wrong, up, down. when someone will send you a sign, tell you what to do, tell you what not to do, or tell you when to do it.
a woman in my office just lost her husband - he had retired 6 months prior, and found that something was off. within 3 months, he was gone. worked his whole life to enjoy retirement, and then only enjoyed 3 months of it. that's not to say he didn't enjoy his life before to retirement - his life was filled with family, laughter, love, events, vacations and all those things we aspire to have in a full life. but their goal was that day when work was no longer needed. when what they did in their day to day was exactly what they wanted.
but why? why are we burying ourselves, only to escape a life we're building? why aren't we building a life we don't want to vacation from?
maybe this whole thing is anti-climatic. maybe i've led you astray. because.... simply, i have no answers. i know that because i still think of these things every day. i still wait for someone to tell me when, why, where, with who, and how. i think about the different variables, in and amongst my daily tasks. and i don't know where it goes from here.
but i do know this: money will not make me happy. money will sit in a bank while i sit in my desk chair. what makes me happy are the things that i do in my spare time. the things that i waste hours doing. the things that i turn down invitations for things, in order to sit, dream about, and practice on a daily basis. i want to be outside. i want to skip and jump and laugh and shout. i want to walk and sit, and crawl and move.
and i want to do those things. i want to do them all
when we finally got down to something, which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him, you do that and forget the money, because, if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. you’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing, which is stupid.
sometimes i'd like to switch off.
but, i watch people. i watch people who work so hard daily to get away - go on vacation. work hard to retire. they work hard to do everything they can to get away from work. not work in the literal way - the definition being, "activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result." instead, work being the thing they go to do in and day out. where they spend the most time. where they exchange hours of their lives, for hours of varous tasks, all leading to the great unknown. the wonderous sunset of their working years - retirement. if we truly meant work - as per its definition - we would do what we enjoyed. do what we loved. do what made us tick, physically, emotionally, practically, and creatively... in the quest to achieve a purpose or result. it would be about the goal. not the details in between.
photo from max wanger photography (via pinterest)
a woman in my office just lost her husband - he had retired 6 months prior, and found that something was off. within 3 months, he was gone. worked his whole life to enjoy retirement, and then only enjoyed 3 months of it. that's not to say he didn't enjoy his life before to retirement - his life was filled with family, laughter, love, events, vacations and all those things we aspire to have in a full life. but their goal was that day when work was no longer needed. when what they did in their day to day was exactly what they wanted.
and it left me wondering.... why wait?
there's something in us that kicks us into overdrive, into a culture permeated with overworked, stressed and exhausted colleagues. we all struggle to stay on top of ever growing work piles, and we all thrive on telling one another how busy we all are - as though we have some sort of status to gain from being the most busy of all. and we're all guilty of it. even the best people fall into the trap.but why? why are we burying ourselves, only to escape a life we're building? why aren't we building a life we don't want to vacation from?
i want a life i don't want to escape from. i want a life i truly want to be in, all the time.
but how do we build that?maybe this whole thing is anti-climatic. maybe i've led you astray. because.... simply, i have no answers. i know that because i still think of these things every day. i still wait for someone to tell me when, why, where, with who, and how. i think about the different variables, in and amongst my daily tasks. and i don't know where it goes from here.
but i do know this: money will not make me happy. money will sit in a bank while i sit in my desk chair. what makes me happy are the things that i do in my spare time. the things that i waste hours doing. the things that i turn down invitations for things, in order to sit, dream about, and practice on a daily basis. i want to be outside. i want to skip and jump and laugh and shout. i want to walk and sit, and crawl and move.
and i want to do those things. i want to do them all
so thank you alan watts.
it is you who reminds me - us - daily, weekly, hourly, yearly, that life is too important to waste. it's the most important thing we have, and yet, it's the only thing we have that is so important, and we have no tangible grasp on what value it holds... as we know not how long we have. your life may be worth 92.5 years, and my life may be worth 38.2. we have no measurement, and yet it is the thing that keeps us going.
so ponder this.
so ponder this.
(video originally seen via nick hoitis on his twitter)
what do you desire? what makes you itch? what sort of a situation would you like?
let’s suppose, I do this often in vocational guidance of students, they come to me and say, well, we’re getting out of college and we have the faintest idea what we want to do. so I always ask the question, what would you like to do if money were no object? how would you really enjoy spending your life? well, it’s so amazing as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say well, we’d like to be painters, we’d like to be poets, we’d like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can’t earn any money that way. or another person says well, I’d like to live an out-of-doors life and ride horses. I said you want to teach in a riding school? let’s go through with it. what do you want to do? when we finally got down to something, which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him, you do that and forget the money, because, if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. you’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing, which is stupid.
better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.
and after all, if you do really like what you’re doing, it doesn't matter what it is, you can eventually turn it – you could eventually become a master of it. it’s the only way to become a master of something, to be really with it. and then you’ll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is. so don’t worry too much. that’s everybody is – somebody is interested in everything, anything you can be interested in, you will find others will. but it’s absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don’t like, in order to go on spending things you don’t like, doing things you don’t like and to teach our children to follow in the same track. see what we are doing, is we’re bringing up children and educating to live the same sort of lives we are living. in order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing, so it’s all retch, and no vomit - it never gets there. and so, therefore, it’s so important to consider this question,
What do I desire?
Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973)
