Life ... it's this fickle, beautiful, devastating, wonderful, awe-inspiring, heart-wrenching, fleeting thing.
It's so hard to pin down and just when you think you've got it defined, that you have it within your grasp once and for all, it somehow evades you, leaving a wisp of smoke in its wake.
Lately, I've been reminded in quite a few ways just how precious this thing we call life is. It's not really a thing ... it's a state of being. It's "being." But how often are we truly being? How often are we really living?
Most days, we are living in the mind chatter of the ego ... caught up in the drama, the pain, the past, the future, the worry, the doubts, fears, grievances, resentments, anger, love, passion, highs, lows, offenses, obsessions, fixations, indifferences, cares, reactions, judgements, comparisons, sadness and giddiness of the mind-made world we live in. It's almost madness when you think about it.
We are all over social media, our phones, the TVs, video games, ear buds, iPods, work, stress, work, stress. We are mindless droids some days and overly anxious, scared, passionate, emotional, irrational humans the next. We are amazing creatures, the capabilities we have, yet we still take for granted all that we have to offer the planet, the universe, the moment.
I guess, in seeing most recently, just how fragile life can be, just how quickly it can change, I realize how pointless the above worries, extreme emotions, fixations, ego chatter, etc. really is in the grand scheme of life.
All of that distracts us from the very act of living. And living is going on all around us ALL the time, if only we tapped into it more. It's shown in nature every moment of the day. It's shown in our pets, in those few moments of completely present awareness when we feel our actual bodies living, when we step back and just exist without trying.
I guess what I'm saying is ... all those cliches about living each moment as though it was your last, stopping to smell the roses, seizing the day, living in the moment, etc., those have become cliches for a reason ... because so many humans have stumbled upon these realizations over and over again in the history of our existence and expressed them in one form or another that they've sadly become redundant and lost their staggering power.
Those mantras lose their power until that very moment, when you're life does, indeed, flash before you, when something does drastically change either personally or to someone close to you, bringing you face to face with your mortality (at least your body and mind's mortality). And my question to myself and all of you is, WHY do we wait until something "happens" to embrace this wisdom we've held within us our whole lives, that has been passed down to us by our former human ancestors?
Why do we let our minds run the show and distract us from truly living each day to its fullest as they say?
I can't answer those questions for you ... I'm still working on them for myself. But what I do know is, continuous practice of present moment awareness, using my compasses (like Lakota and Bella, nature, yoga, meditation, my breath, my heartbeat) to bring me back to that place whenever I can, that's going to be the key to me living more and more fully. Because time is, indeed, moving. We are aging. Life is happening.
And the only thing there truly ever is ... is the present.
~C~
It's so hard to pin down and just when you think you've got it defined, that you have it within your grasp once and for all, it somehow evades you, leaving a wisp of smoke in its wake.
Lately, I've been reminded in quite a few ways just how precious this thing we call life is. It's not really a thing ... it's a state of being. It's "being." But how often are we truly being? How often are we really living?
Most days, we are living in the mind chatter of the ego ... caught up in the drama, the pain, the past, the future, the worry, the doubts, fears, grievances, resentments, anger, love, passion, highs, lows, offenses, obsessions, fixations, indifferences, cares, reactions, judgements, comparisons, sadness and giddiness of the mind-made world we live in. It's almost madness when you think about it.
We are all over social media, our phones, the TVs, video games, ear buds, iPods, work, stress, work, stress. We are mindless droids some days and overly anxious, scared, passionate, emotional, irrational humans the next. We are amazing creatures, the capabilities we have, yet we still take for granted all that we have to offer the planet, the universe, the moment.
I guess, in seeing most recently, just how fragile life can be, just how quickly it can change, I realize how pointless the above worries, extreme emotions, fixations, ego chatter, etc. really is in the grand scheme of life.
All of that distracts us from the very act of living. And living is going on all around us ALL the time, if only we tapped into it more. It's shown in nature every moment of the day. It's shown in our pets, in those few moments of completely present awareness when we feel our actual bodies living, when we step back and just exist without trying.
I guess what I'm saying is ... all those cliches about living each moment as though it was your last, stopping to smell the roses, seizing the day, living in the moment, etc., those have become cliches for a reason ... because so many humans have stumbled upon these realizations over and over again in the history of our existence and expressed them in one form or another that they've sadly become redundant and lost their staggering power.
Those mantras lose their power until that very moment, when you're life does, indeed, flash before you, when something does drastically change either personally or to someone close to you, bringing you face to face with your mortality (at least your body and mind's mortality). And my question to myself and all of you is, WHY do we wait until something "happens" to embrace this wisdom we've held within us our whole lives, that has been passed down to us by our former human ancestors?
Why do we let our minds run the show and distract us from truly living each day to its fullest as they say?
I can't answer those questions for you ... I'm still working on them for myself. But what I do know is, continuous practice of present moment awareness, using my compasses (like Lakota and Bella, nature, yoga, meditation, my breath, my heartbeat) to bring me back to that place whenever I can, that's going to be the key to me living more and more fully. Because time is, indeed, moving. We are aging. Life is happening.
And the only thing there truly ever is ... is the present.
~C~
I think we wait until something happens to embrace this wisdom because it's only then that our mortality, or the fact that all this could end suddenly, confronts us. Until that point, we always have "tomorrow" so we put off living that wisdom. Does that make sense? Just my two cents :)
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