June 8, 2013
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Future
A picture my friend posted on Google+ made me think of the sublime:
We’re afraid of tomorrow so we can’t live today. I think I’m always afraid of tomorrow. So every single day I’m afraid of the next day. I am afraid of failure, I am afraid of living a purposeless life. It’s a paradox because the fear becomes paralytic, so that all you really want is death so that you don’t have to live in fear anymore.
You’ve heard of those experiments where they give rats access to either heroin or food. Given the choice, the rats would choose heroin until they died. If the drugs were taken away, the rats would hit their heads against their cage until they killed themselves. I always wonder, is it always a blessing to have experienced something so wonderful only to have it taken away from you? Is it possible to learn to enjoy abstinence from all or any physical pleasure? There are many religions that attribute the sense of being with having no wants and no needs – to really nullify everything that seems to be the drive for living. So in essence, they learn how to enjoy death while being alive, or being alive while dead – although dead is really kind of a bad word to use since it suggests that it’s a negative thing. Maybe you are more alive when you have nothing and want nothing.
I always find myself so tangled up in thoughts of the past or anticipation of the future that I hardly find it possible to live in the moment. I should re-read Eckhart Tolle.
Comments (1)
It helps when you realize that the past can’t be change and the future is uncertain, so our greatest power lies in the present.
In life there is hope. If you can wake up to the simplicity and warmth of the Sun and enjoy a simple breakfast, that’s a celebration of life. =) When it’s recognized that life is such a relatively short state of being, it’s a great motivation to just enjoy participating.