Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Wait a minute, what if this is it?

Snapshot of beargrass along a hike in Glacier NP

 Oliver Burkeman, in a post titled "There's No Such Things as a Fresh Start," writes:

The American Zen teacher John Tarrant says, "freedom, waking up and fearlessness come down to the simplicity of 'Wait a minute, what if this is it?'" When I hear such exhortations to live in the moment, the fresh-start addict in me is quite capable of turning them into perfectionistic plans, too: "From tomorrow morning, I'll meditate every single day, and become the kind of person who lives in the moment!" But Tarrant's point isn't that you should live in the moment tomorrow. It's that this is it, right now, with all its odious imperfections – the tasks that remain unaddressed, the messes that haven't been cleared up, the enormous personality flaws that still haven't been corrected. And it's the only place I can ever hope to get anything meaningful done. 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment