Are you there yet?
Life is big.
Life is a big thing and on too many occasions someone tries to sum it up to make it seem simple and easy. It is not.
But that doesn’t mean life itself is hard, its beauty comes from the complexity. Life means so much but today the focus is on a frequently used comparison as in life as a journey.
Journey or pilgrimage includes a long way till you get to your destination, in the case of life we all share the same destination: death. But is life all about death?
To paraphrase Alan Watts we tend to see life as a staircase or so we are told from the very beginning science we were very little:
In kindergarten it is important for the little kids to which group they belong to then start their journey in school. In Germany it is a 12 years challenge and you start counting from the first year and it ends with the twelfth year. I can still remember this notion of finally finishing school, this lifelong journey from 1st to 13th year (back then we had an additional year). Thoughts like “nothing will ever be so challenging” run through your mind and everybody is stressed out to get good final grades because grades may decide whether you will be able to study what you want to study or whether you will have to settle for something less interesting.
This huge culmination, this first big milestone called “Abitur” (= general qualification for university entrance in Germany) seemed like the holy grail of achievements or at least that’s what you are taught to believe in school.
Next step is matriculation into university and you are demoted again to start from first year, again you are forced to adapt to a completely new environment to survive and later strive in. Again this distant target appears and you go for it. Year after year after year you try to get your grades right to get this piece of paper saying you are qualified for certain things. Another important paper you might think and yes there is importance to it, but it is not giving meaningfulness to every aspect in your life. It does not dictate your way of living.
Because once you finally complete university you start all over again in a job and again another distant target appears and since going for hard longtime goals is what they taught us from the beginning a lot of us tend to keep on going. Every time in every stage more convinced it is coming, this thing where we finally made it, it is going to be there and it is going to be wonderful, marvelous and everything we ever thought we would need.
Sometimes you pause for a moment asking yourself “Am I there yet?” and if there are still distant targets to chase. Keep on chasing and fulfill your journey if you really are convinced to get somewhere even if it is the freedom of retirement where you can enjoy the beauty of life being old.
The other option and I agree with Alan Watts on that part, is to see life not as a journey or a pilgrimage but as an end in itself. When children play they play the game not to win, that’s an adult-idea, but for the games sake. Watts uses the analogy of music saying the reason for listen to music is not the final chord crashing down but the whole piece. Life is like music or dance. Watts says not aiming at anything in particular but an end in itself.
For those of you who got till this point and want to enjoy a video about the topic, here you go — Alan Watts — Life and Music (South Park creators short film)
It is coming, it is coming. I just have to get through the next couple of weeks/months/years/decades and it will be there, right?
No, it’s wrong. You are here now. What do you want to do? What do you desire? What makes you itch? What sort of situation would you like?
These questions are also answered by Alan Watts in a great comic by Zen Pencils as shown below.
But back to me, am I there yet?
Of course. :) (At least I try to be)
I always was there, I am there and I will be there or here for that matter.
As stated in my first article I am a scanner, a person with a huge variety of interests and in great danger of losing myself in between those interests. I am still in danger of social media and all the attention economy behind that and other things triggering my procrastination, like everybody else. But as a scanner there is a difference between distracting yourself from doing anything and doing 10 things at once.
In both cases your progress is slow but distracting yourself by scrolling down your Instagram only triggers short term gratification and like with every addiction you will need to go back for more and more and more without an end in sight.
While switching from one interest to the next is rejuvenating because you are always triggered by new problems, new worlds and need to adapt with new mindsets to tackle all of those interests of yours.
To be honest I am still a victim of the attention economy but I am doing some writing and I am chasing my dreams while being here in the now; not only breathing and dwelling on mindfulness but to apreciate every idea, every interest and even every distraction.
And then to keep doing what I like doing, to keep doing what I desire.
Hugs
