Sometimes I wonder if we don't stop to appreciate the good things in our lives more often because, if we did, then we would perhaps also have to face the fear that we might one day lose them, that they are indeed good and that good things, like all things really, are not permanent. But then it seems important to point out precisely that life is not permanent but ever changing, ever shifting, and completely unpredictable. This then only leads to one of two conclusions:
A. The good thing may very well be gone tomorrow so you do need to stop and appreciate it; you need to enjoy the shit out of it because you can't do so forever.
B. Given life's unpredictability you might not ever really lose the good thing after all and hence worrying about it one day leaving is just silly and a waste of good emotion.
I suppose there is also an option C in which the good thing could be tomorrow replaced with a great thing and you won't really have missed taking the good thing for granted. However, since we can't really ever know, it seems the better idea to stay in good practice in appreciating things. Otherwise, you won't even notice when the good thing becomes a great thing in the first place.
Taking things for granted, or if you will, not stopping to smell the roses likely comes from something much more primitive. Like, maybe we're only able to focus on so much at once and therefore give our attention to the thing that is most demanding of our attention good or bad. And let's face it, the misbehaved child gets more attention after all, not because the attention is of better quality, but simply because it demands more. The misbehaved child may be more unpleasant, but it demands. There are immediate consequences to ignoring it. And so it is that we spend our time worrying about bills and taking out the trash because they require more focus and energy and at the end of the day there just isn't any left to oo and ah at our surroundings.
Or, putting it another way, maybe it is less an issue of focus but an issue of prioritizing. We're just so darn busy, and, let's face it, paying the bills and taking out the trash rank higher on the list than, say, staring up at your ceiling being simply grateful that you have ceiling above you because, let's face it, paying the bills and taking out the trash have deadlines after all, how ever solid or arbitrary, and ignoring them may result in losing you the very ceiling you never stop to be grateful for, no matter how pretty or vaulted or plain it may be. And there just simply isn't anyone or thing or deadline demanding that you stop, you sit, you relax, and just enjoy what is around you. There may be long term side effects of not doing these things, but everything else is much more immediate.
Then there is that issue of time. Time is such a strange concept because we both invented it and discovered it. Hours and minutes and years are arbitrary, fake, unreal. They merely give us a (likely) false sense of control over the very real turning of the earth and aging of our hair. If the watch stops, nothing else does.
And perhaps it is because time is so abstract and yet so countable that we seem to, for some reason, at least for a good portion of our lives, beleive that we will not run out of it for, well, quite some time. There is always a tomorrow, and while that may very well be true, what we fail to realize (or at least remember regularly) is that there will not always be a tomorrow for us. At least not in this form or state of consciousness.
And so it is that we can always wait until the weekend to hug a friend or sit down and really enjoy a meal.
But maybe there too lies the answer. In the reverse. Maybe it isn't that other things take so much time (or that is only part of it). Maybe it is simply that we think we "don't have time" to do the stopping and appreciating of things because we for some reason think that will take as much time as, nay more time than, everything else. But as I already pointed out, stopping to smell the roses is far less demanding and in fact, takes less time, than even taking out the trash, which smells.
In other words, it isn't that we need to schedule an hour out of our day to go through our drawers and phone book and appreciate each thing, but more that we should fill our days with these little moments of joy, because really it simply doesn't take that much time to pause and notice and smile. Though, in the end it would surely add up to much more than an hour anyway, and it would likely make the day more livable too.
But perhaps now I have come full circle because if it is that simple then what is stopping us? Fear? Distraction? Tight Schedules?
Time flies. People like to say that time flies when you're having fun, but the real truth of the matter is that time flies. period. The only time it drags is when you're bored or displeased and even that too passes. It all passes. Just keeps on passing us right on by- because life is ever changing, ever shifting, unpredictable.
So whether your good thing lasts only a moment or day or goes unnoticed for a life time, the truth of the matter is that in the grand scheme of things it is brief. It will seem brief. And even if we harbor no regrets of how we spent our time with our little joys, we will scarcely be found to say, oh well, I've had enough and shall never want for that again.
Which brings us back to the simple fact of the matter.
Good moments, good people, are like butterflies that flutter through our lives, quick and beautiful. So quiet that if we look the wrong way we might miss them, yet if we try too hard to capture and pin them, we knock the dust from their wings, and while they cannot fly away, they lose their life and beauty. But if we can, just stop, just for a moment, those briefest of moments that they quietly circle us, and appreciate them, even for a fraction of the time they are there, we can at least create clear, crisp memories, memories we can look back on without regret, without doubt, and sigh, saying, "yes, that really was wonderful," and those moments can live forever, if not in time, then within us.
We need only to do it.
A. The good thing may very well be gone tomorrow so you do need to stop and appreciate it; you need to enjoy the shit out of it because you can't do so forever.
B. Given life's unpredictability you might not ever really lose the good thing after all and hence worrying about it one day leaving is just silly and a waste of good emotion.
I suppose there is also an option C in which the good thing could be tomorrow replaced with a great thing and you won't really have missed taking the good thing for granted. However, since we can't really ever know, it seems the better idea to stay in good practice in appreciating things. Otherwise, you won't even notice when the good thing becomes a great thing in the first place.
Taking things for granted, or if you will, not stopping to smell the roses likely comes from something much more primitive. Like, maybe we're only able to focus on so much at once and therefore give our attention to the thing that is most demanding of our attention good or bad. And let's face it, the misbehaved child gets more attention after all, not because the attention is of better quality, but simply because it demands more. The misbehaved child may be more unpleasant, but it demands. There are immediate consequences to ignoring it. And so it is that we spend our time worrying about bills and taking out the trash because they require more focus and energy and at the end of the day there just isn't any left to oo and ah at our surroundings.
Or, putting it another way, maybe it is less an issue of focus but an issue of prioritizing. We're just so darn busy, and, let's face it, paying the bills and taking out the trash rank higher on the list than, say, staring up at your ceiling being simply grateful that you have ceiling above you because, let's face it, paying the bills and taking out the trash have deadlines after all, how ever solid or arbitrary, and ignoring them may result in losing you the very ceiling you never stop to be grateful for, no matter how pretty or vaulted or plain it may be. And there just simply isn't anyone or thing or deadline demanding that you stop, you sit, you relax, and just enjoy what is around you. There may be long term side effects of not doing these things, but everything else is much more immediate.
Then there is that issue of time. Time is such a strange concept because we both invented it and discovered it. Hours and minutes and years are arbitrary, fake, unreal. They merely give us a (likely) false sense of control over the very real turning of the earth and aging of our hair. If the watch stops, nothing else does.
And perhaps it is because time is so abstract and yet so countable that we seem to, for some reason, at least for a good portion of our lives, beleive that we will not run out of it for, well, quite some time. There is always a tomorrow, and while that may very well be true, what we fail to realize (or at least remember regularly) is that there will not always be a tomorrow for us. At least not in this form or state of consciousness.
And so it is that we can always wait until the weekend to hug a friend or sit down and really enjoy a meal.
But maybe there too lies the answer. In the reverse. Maybe it isn't that other things take so much time (or that is only part of it). Maybe it is simply that we think we "don't have time" to do the stopping and appreciating of things because we for some reason think that will take as much time as, nay more time than, everything else. But as I already pointed out, stopping to smell the roses is far less demanding and in fact, takes less time, than even taking out the trash, which smells.
In other words, it isn't that we need to schedule an hour out of our day to go through our drawers and phone book and appreciate each thing, but more that we should fill our days with these little moments of joy, because really it simply doesn't take that much time to pause and notice and smile. Though, in the end it would surely add up to much more than an hour anyway, and it would likely make the day more livable too.
But perhaps now I have come full circle because if it is that simple then what is stopping us? Fear? Distraction? Tight Schedules?
Time flies. People like to say that time flies when you're having fun, but the real truth of the matter is that time flies. period. The only time it drags is when you're bored or displeased and even that too passes. It all passes. Just keeps on passing us right on by- because life is ever changing, ever shifting, unpredictable.
So whether your good thing lasts only a moment or day or goes unnoticed for a life time, the truth of the matter is that in the grand scheme of things it is brief. It will seem brief. And even if we harbor no regrets of how we spent our time with our little joys, we will scarcely be found to say, oh well, I've had enough and shall never want for that again.
Which brings us back to the simple fact of the matter.
Good moments, good people, are like butterflies that flutter through our lives, quick and beautiful. So quiet that if we look the wrong way we might miss them, yet if we try too hard to capture and pin them, we knock the dust from their wings, and while they cannot fly away, they lose their life and beauty. But if we can, just stop, just for a moment, those briefest of moments that they quietly circle us, and appreciate them, even for a fraction of the time they are there, we can at least create clear, crisp memories, memories we can look back on without regret, without doubt, and sigh, saying, "yes, that really was wonderful," and those moments can live forever, if not in time, then within us.
We need only to do it.
Comments
Post a Comment