Continuing on with the one life to live theme, are you really living your life right now or are you just drifting through it with a few little moments of interest popping up every now and then, appreciated and enjoyed, but unbidden and unplanned?
We all know that trees and grass are alive, and very intricate and amazing things they are too. All things that are alive are complex and incredible and awe-inspiring, and should be treated with the greatest of respect for no other reason than they are living things, right?
But would you say they are ‘living’ in the sense that I mean it here. Living as in actually consciously going out and taking a deep breath, looking around and deciding to really truly live their life? Forge ahead, make mistakes, pick themselves up and keep going towards some personal purpose that is has a meaning to them as individual and unique as yours should to you and mine does to me? Well, when you think of it like that, the answer is a resounding no!
Living in that sense of the word requires a conscious effort, a sustained awareness that every moment you do something wasteful or pointless is a moment you will never get back. Living consciously like that is scary, and it requires great inner strength, because we are conditioned from birth to have our lives mapped out for us by a cultural system of how we should live our lives here in the good old Western world. Our system of ‘living’ (or culture I guess?) has been taken over to a large extent by things that are totally external to what has been proven time and again to make your rather short and insignificant time on this rock pleasant, if not enjoyable.
Living consciously requires not only inner strength but great courage. Courage to actually think about what you are doing and why. Let’s not mess about – it’s a hard thing to do! But when you do, and you really live with the courage of your convictions (integrity in other words), that is when the people who are too timid to get off the merry go round for a minute look on in awe and say ‘Wow, that person is really living their own life. I wish I could do that…”.
So, are you going to think about what is really important to you, or are you going to keep going with the herd? Everyone else is going a particular direction, so it must be the right way to go, right? Hmmm, innately I suspect you are smarter than that….but be warned, once you take the blinkers off, you will never be able to put them back on, which may end up being a problem for you, because the world will seem like a different place.
That guy in the expensive car at the traffic lights will not impress you anymore, because you will realise that it is all based on the idea that you will be impressed because that is just the way it is. And it isn’t. It isn’t because there will always be a more expensive car, or a fancier suit, or a more expensive whiz bang watch.
So who really cares? Surely you know that o
nce you play that game, you will never ever win, because that system is designed just to keep you playing.
nce you play that game, you will never ever win, because that system is designed just to keep you playing.
So here's a little experiment for you.
After you have read this, make a conscious decision to mentally get off the merry go round. Just for today. Take those carousel pony blinkers off and then pose this question to yourself “I know that I am alive…but have I been living?”. And good luck!
