Here’s the best scribble that I read today (i.e. most applicable to me at this point) from NY Times’ For the Time Being. The italics are mine. Struck me most.
Life is a challenge and in the welter of it all it is easy to forget who you are. Decades go by. Finally something happens. Or maybe nothing does. But one day you notice that you are suddenly lost, miles away from home, with no sense of direction. And you don’t know what to do.
To really live is to accept that you live “for the time being,” and to fully enter that moment of time. Living is that, not building up an identity or a set of accomplishments or relationships, though of course we do that too. But primarily, fundamentally, to live is to embrace each moment as if it were the first, last, and all moments of time. Whether you like this moment or not is not the point: in fact liking it or not liking it, being willing or unwilling to accept it, depending on whether or not you like it, is to sit on the fence of your life, waiting to decide whether or not to live, and so never actually living. I find it impressive how thoroughly normal it is be so tentative about the time of our lives, or so asleep within it, that we miss it entirely. Most of us don’t know what it actually feels like to be alive. We know about our problems, our desires, our goals and accomplishments, but we don’t know much about our lives. It generally takes a huge event, the equivalent or a birth or a death, to wake up our sense of living this moment we are given – this moment that is just for the time being, because it passes even as it arrives. Meditation is feeling the feeling of being alive for the time being. Life is more poignant than we know.
We want enjoyment, we want to avoid pain and discomfort. But it is impossible that things will always work out, impossible to avoid pain and discomfort. So to be happy, with a happiness that doesn’t blow away with every wind, we need to be able to make use of what happens to us — all of it — whether we find ourselves at the top of a mountain or at the bottom of the sea.
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0 thoughts on “Make use of what happens, all of it”
kg
di ba it’s really better to live each day to the fullest? sabi nga nila. our lives are but borrowed from God. so we are here to make the most out of it. relish every moment, every now. i’ve long since learned not to really live for teh future, but for the present. obvious ba? he! he!
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Josiet
Although I know (but it doesn’t mean I practice it all the time) all those things about living and making the most of life, it’s nice to be reminded once and again. Thanks for sharing!
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Garando
Quite a good read. Thanks for sharing!
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dong ho
carpe diem! hehehe…
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Nomadic Pinoy
I do live for the day and try to relish every moment of it. Great post!
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Toni
I LOVE IT. I’ve been trying to imbibe this thinking lately. We can’t plan everything! I had a similar post in Happy Nest, the most recent one. Let’s just take it day by day, embrace life as it is, and “make use of what happens” — I love that line. Thanks a lot for sharing Jo! It’s always great to be reminded of the good things in life.
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bw
I love the article and the words of wisdom behind it. Thanks for sharing 🙂
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Glenda
this is such a great find, i love the article! it’s easy to get lost in the minutiae of life and forget about how it is to just embrace life. will share this with others.
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