Drift happens everywhere. It happens in relationships, it happens in jobs, it happens in school, it happens in hobbies, it happens in meditation growth. Drift happens. It’s necessary- without it, we never have a chance to recommit to what we’re doing. It’s not a sign that it’s time to change. It’s a sign that it’s time to look around, get our bearings. Enjoy our paths for a few moments.
One of the hardest things that i’m trying to do is to get comfortable with my imperfection. Not just that i’m not perfect, but that i’m genuinely, truly dissatisfied with a lot of things.
Now, dissatisfaction is a genuine emotion, and one which exists for a reason. It tells me that there’s a lot in [...]
Let my ignorance and my failings
Remain far behind me like tracks made in a wet season,
At the end of which I have vanished,
So that those who track me for their own twisted ends
May be rewarded only with ignorance and failings.
But let me leave my cry stretched out behind me like a road
On which I have followed you.
And sustain me for my time in the desert
On what is essential to me.
-W. S. Merwin
In our daily lives, as we go about ordinary daily things, we don’t always recognise that everything we do is a choice. Everything. Every time your hands touch something, it’s an opportunity to make something right, something better, something perfect or at least as good as can be made by our hands. The Shakers understood this. The point of doing it right isn’t just to do it right and improve the world; getting it right improves us, and that’s how we get the world we want. It’s the glorious consequence of action: action changes us. Exercise begets strength, work begets result, and we become altered according to how we’ve done our daily lives.
My little sister came to me with a complaint about post-modernism, which she was being taught about in high school.
“It hurts,” she said.
I couldn’t agree more. She talked about how the breaking down of boundaries leaves very little to work with, and how it failed to replace them with anything that she could use. Since [...]
I stand before you as an independent agent, autonomous and responsible for myself and my actions. Every thinking being is a world, unique and alive, and I am responsible for the maintenance of the world that I contain. Each of us is whole, unique, and possessed of limitless potential and our own quirks and limitations, and are responsible for the choices we make and the people we become.
When you were a kid, you played the game. Red light, green light. One kid faces the wall. They say, “green light,” and everyone scrambles forward. “1-2-3 Red light!” cries the stoplight child, and whirls around. Anyone still moving is “out.” The first to reach the stoplight crier under these rules becomes the next stoplight. Red light. Stop. Green light. Go.
That’s the thing about society that amazes me.
I’m so afraid that what I’m doing now won’t have been enough for you, my later self. Or I’ll have done the wrong thing, and somehow everything I’m doing now is so much nonsense, and I’ll regret not having done one thing or another to make the future you live in perfect and good and worthwhile.
I’m writing you this letter to tell you that, while I love you as we can only love our future selves, I’ve come to the realisation that it’s not my problem.
“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” ~Nelson Henderson
The point of life isn’t happiness. Everyone discovers that, at some point- that all the chasing after toys, titles, fame, money, or template-matching persona are useless at creating a fulfilling life. They do give you plenty to work at in the meantime, but we look on those who have them with envy and pity, a weird combination of scorn and wish. We wish we didn’t have to work so hard for what we want. We envy them the ability to make their own lives easier. At the same time, we recognize that money isn’t everything, fame can be hollow, and being just like our parents isn’t a desirable end.