 My Life, Your Life,
Life is Life
Life is Life
My friend Beth got married recently for the second time. “I’m working hard at this marriage,” she said intensely, as if she were training for a marathon. My first reaction was concern, but I kept my thoughts to myself. I was thinking, “Oh, dear Beth, must you work so hard to make this relationship work? Can’t you simply let it happen? Let each of you be your best selves. Let caring and affection and love blossom in your lives, because it is part of your nature. Don’t stifle yourself. Don’t force yourself into a foreign behavior.”
My Life, Your Life
There is a difference between wanting something to happen and allowing something to happen. The violet in the grass does not grow and bloom because it decides to grow and bloom. It makes no effort, no act of will or conscious choice for the beauty of the violet to happen. The violet simply yields to the life spirit that animates it.
In school we learn that to understand things we must label them. With our textbook knowledge, we make distinctions between objects, make judgments and assign value. We understand mechanics better when we can attach a formula to the movement of a steel ball rolling down an inclined plane. We get a good grade in biology by tagging each plant with its genus and species, by identifying similarities and making distinctions. To learn literature, we abstract the theme, plot and character motivation from a story.
Out in our daily life, we also classify people the same way. We measure people for their beauty, wealth, knowledge, confidence and skill. But for beauty to exist, we must also see ugliness. For motion to exist, we must also have stillness. For wealth, we must see poverty. These are all qualities of degree. We spend a lot of time assessing the degree of wealth, the degree of activity, the degree of beauty for whatever or whoever comes into our life.
Weights and Measures for Life
Academic knowledge is deconstructive. It tears down the whole to identify its parts. When it comes to understanding yourself and the life you lead, your first and worst approach is deconstructive. You struggle to understand yourself, and you examine each aspect of identity. You measure yourself against the social yardstick you learned. You question your motives. You judge your character. You compare yourself to your friends. You measure your wealth and your appearance and your success. Every day, over and over, you judge yourself. And as always, you find yourself coming up short.
You also waste a lot of time second-guessing your choices. You thoughts are full of “I should-have,” “I could-have,” and “I would-have.” These thoughts are like a set of brass scales, weighing and balancing, teeter-tottering back and forth in the world of ideas, trying to find equilibrium. The duality of your thoughts wears you down.
My Life
I had a job at a small, gung-ho Internet company. The work was right up my alley and I know that I did well. But every year, the owner conducted a job evaluation. The procedure was quite formal. I was asked to complete a written report of self-evaluation. The highlight of the report was this question: On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your performance this year? My first impulse was to joke. “For this kind of money, you’ll never find anyone any better,” I thought to myself. But after some reflection, I decided that I could not answer this question, and I told the boss why. The only way to rank my performance is to have a measuring stick for comparison. All activity is relative to the scale you use to measure it. With what yardstick was I to rank myself? If you compare my management skills to Hillary Clinton or Condoleezza Rice, I fall dismally short. But if you compare my work to the bag lady who sleeps under the bridge, I look pretty darn good.
Maybe I need a better yardstick for my life than politicians and bag ladies. I could ask myself how well I used my talents and resources. Have I found the best job for my skills? Does my work give me happiness and contentment? Have I looked in the right direction for personal fulfillment? None of these questions ever came up at my job evaluation. We all know why.
Your Life
So here you are again, analyzing, criticizing and deconstructing yourself. Your self-talk will always find something wrong if you let it. In your hectic thoughts, the brass scale can never come to rest. Won’t you turn off your self-talk before it tears you apart? What’s the point of it all? Is this the best way to live life?
Life is a mystery. Time is a mystery. Growth is a mystery. Despite all the scientific research, the essence of life remains a profound mystery. There is no yardstick that can take the full measure of a human being. Instead of trying to understand, measure and criticize, recognize that you are like the sparrow riding the wind. You are like the water spilling over the stones. You are the violet blooming in the grass. You do not have to judge yourself anymore. You are one more creature of the world, living with self-awareness and introspection. Come to terms with life.
Life is Life
Have you heard the song Life is Life? It was an international hit in 1985, sung by the Austrian pop-rock group Opus.
Life is life
When we all give the power
We all give the best
Every minute of an hour
Don't think about the rest
And you all get the power
You all get the best
When everyone gets everything
And every song everybody sings
Life is life.
I’ll tell you what I wanted to tell my friend Beth, and didn’t. Don’t work so hard at life. Don’t judge yourself critically. Do not expect yourself to be a paragon of perfection. Do not blame yourself when things go wrong. Do not measure yourself against others. Trust your nature. Live peacefully. Just be.
So, today, just let life happen to you, like the flowering of a violet. See yourself as a sparrow in flight. Imagine yourself as the water flowing in the creek. Water does not judge the speed of the current. It does not measure the depth of the spill, or the distance to the shore. It does not count the fallen leaves. The water does what fulfills its nature: It seeks its own level. Life is life.
I hope life brings you much success. I wish you a very happy day.
----- Surfer Sam
If you liked this post, please leave a small donation.
> > Please return to the top.
Now it's your turn to spread the happiness and share this with someone else.
Email this page link to a friend.
Howdy! Welcome to Surfer Sam and Friends. Our Free Online Magazine gives you blogs, funny jokes, famous quotes, funny stories, clean funny pictures, games, travel and sage advice. We've also got free ecards - Surfer Cards - for you to email. So enjoy yourself here. Chill out and relax. Meet the gang. And thanks for helping out, mate. Life's a beach!
 
|
