I like him. He's
authentic.
His situation wasn't unlike the one many of us are finding ourselves in
around about now. Indeed I'll bet you good
money
it wasn't unlike the one all of us will find ourselves in,
more sooner than later. It certainly wasn't unlike mine, and it
probably isn't unlike yours. And if it's not
the way
yours is now, then it's
the way
yours will be soon. So what is it exactly, this
human-sounding
situation that all of us will invariably find ourselves in, more sooner
than later?
At some point, our focus on what our lives are going to be about, will
shift. Arguably that's a maybe for many things. For this one, it's a
slam dunk absolute certainty. Initially, we're
pre-occupied with what we need to do to build and sustain our lives,
for ourselves and / or for our
families.
We're
driven
by what we have to do. The
future's
wide
open.
But then it becomes blindingly, unavoidably,
unrelentingly
obvious we only have so many years of life left. It may be five years.
It may be twenty. Some of us will appreciate this with fifty years or
more to go. However long it is, what jumped out of the shadows and
confronted him ie grabbed him by the throat (so to
speak)
is that soon all this will be over, and the
questionflooding
over him like an Indonesian
tsunami,
was "To what should I allocate the rest of my
time?".
That's where he was at. That's what he was confronting. And that's the
question
he was
asking.
I suggested "Unless you distinguish its
context,
I don't think that's an
inquiry
worth engaging in", to which he (sounding surprised)
asked
"Why
not? Wait a
moment:
what do you
mean
by 'unless you distinguish its
context'
Laurence?".
I shared that I thought a more potent
question
to
ask
would be "What does allocating my
time,
accomplish?", to which he responded almost immediately, saying "It
gives
meaning
to my life.". I
loved
his honesty. I said "Exactly, and you could also say 'It gives me
something to do', yes?". "Yes" he said, "it does.". I
asked
him what it would be like if he didn't have to do anything - to be
specific, if he didn't add on anything to do (I
intended
this to be the thin edge of a shim to drive an
opening
into a
conversation
we find hard to have: a
conversation
about
how
much of what we do, is just in order to avoid experiencing life's
emptiness and
meaninglessness).
If our fundamental experience of
being alive
isn't enough, if we can't
simplybe with life's
emptiness and
meaninglessness,
then we're likely to do whatever we do on top of that experience,
simply
in order to hide ie to mask ie to avoid the pressing,
ongoing experience of it isn't enough. That says whatever we do, no
matter
how
noble, is merely avoidance ie it's avoiding the raw experience of
being alive.
"Is there any other option?" he
wondered
(he
asked
it rhetorically - as if there really is no other option). "Yes"
I said, "there is: what about doing whatever you do, while
beingwho you are
as enough, instead of doing whatever you do as
compensation for ie in order to avoid experiencing
beingwho you are
as not enough? That's the other option. If
you don't knowhow
to access that, it's available for you to
discover.".
Now I grant you there's some
untraditional grammar
in those sentences. But they're
getable.
And he did
get
it - that I could tell. It wasn't anything he'd
inquired
into before. It turned his
inquiry
around through one hundred and eighty degrees, shifting his focus from
"To what should I allocate the rest of my
time?"
to "Is it
possible
to experience
beingwho I am
as enough?". The
light
went on. The difference the latter would make to his
future
plans was instantly and abundantly, blazinglyclear.