IS SURVIVAL GETTING IN THE WAY OF YOUR LIFE?
Friday, May 15, 2020
Do I want my future to be different from my past?
Until recently, I would always have reflexively and strongly argued YES, OF COURSE, that is what I want. No question about it.
Recent circumstances have thrown us all off our feet a little, but that first statement is still valid – I don’t want the future to be a repeat or re-run of my past, I still want a future that is full, vibrant, engaging, and valuable with a lower level of mistakes, which sounds contradictory when considering a view I endorse:
- make more mistakes, start more things, fail, fail, fail … because I know that is the path to success in anything, in everything, for everyone.
And then I caught myself.
I was mid-way through writing a note to a friend and lovely writer; I was taking umbrage with something she’d written, and realized what I was railing against were not only her words but also my reality: that of being somewhat flippant about the flexibility and ambitions of the future while at the same time realizing I’m talking the same story but also talking about it more than doing it.
Enter, another thought ~
As we all try to grapple with an uncertain future (and really, when was anything certain before?), I was considering this: as people are in survival mode, weighing new ways to do what they’ve always done against imagining doing something they’ve never done …
What about things we’ve done, which failed, which we’ve left behind?
Might they ‘not fail’ now? Or might they succeed now – with the benefit of past experience, and given the landscape has shifted so radically now?
And what about things we’ve done which didn’t fail so much, as we ‘stopped doing them,’ something we can pick up again merely by thinking it through?
Then, just then, I knew what I would do.
At the same time, I knew the best way to do it was ‘just do it’ rather than thinking about doing it or writing about doing it.
Reader feedback:
FULL-THROATED-THROTTLEDMark, no need to wonder if there will ever be a prison big enough to hold all of us who only think of “bad deeds”, if we acted, there isn’t even enough space to hold all of “us” who do more than think about it, at least according to our cultural norms (3 strike rule, etc.). LH, Lethbridge, AB
Hi Mark. Hope you are well, and really enjoyed today's and Tuesday's musing on SLEEP. Attached is the simple NSTEP way of describing this in pictures , DH, Calgary, AB
I so enjoy your “musing” but this morning you made me laugh out loud. Thanks 😊!, CH, Edmonton, AB
Que Sera, Sera COVIDI hope the majority of us wouldn’t do it the same as Trump. LH, Lethbridge, AB
Hi ya Mark, Long, but good...Those are my ponderings, too. Loved the early examples!, SF, Lethbridge, AB
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