Monticello Deli, Monticello Road,
Napa Valley,
California, USA
March 26, 2015
"If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but
timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the
present."
... Ludwig Wittgenstein
This essay,
One Day
One Life: A
Reflection
On Time,
is the companion piece to
I am indebted to Dr Robert Lee "Bob" Culver who inspired this
conversation.
At some point (it came on gradually in the latter third of
my life) I began living my life as one seamless experience rather than
as a discontiguous sequence of days - or, said another way, I began
living my life as one long day ie as one infinitely long
day rather than as a sequence of component days. That's about the same
time as I realized my life has always been one seamless
experience ie one infinitely long day, and that in naïvely living
it as a discontiguous sequence of days (as I'd done until then), in
some fundamental way I'd missed a
vast
opportunity. Nothing changed - yet the
context
in which I held it all, shifted dramatically.
The old adage
"One day
at a time" apprises us to live life as a discontiguous sequence of
days. There's certainly
nothing wrong with that.
There've been times in my life when such counsel wasn't only welcome
but also timely - not to mention useful. For the purposes of
thisconversation
however, I've realized
viewing
life as lived
one day
at a time, is really just the defaultview
of living life ie it's our thrownview
if you will, a
view
which requires no distinguishing. Furthermore, if this
view
ever gets lost, it
works
to reinstate it from time to time, especially when we're overwhelmed.
In times of overwhelm, reverting to living life
one day
at a time (which is to say reminding ourselves of this already option)
provides a certain welcome respite - even if only temporarily.
What I began to see however, is that designating the close of each day
as the end of a chunk of my life (so to
speak),
is entirely arbitrary - if not misleading and distracting. The thing is
not to replace living life
one day
at a time, with living life as one seamless experience, but rather to
include living life
one day
at a time, within the newly distinguished broader
context
of living life as one seamless experience (it's a "both" - not an
"either / or").
That said, living life in the broader
context
of one seamless experience rather than in one of a discontiguous
sequence of days, allows for an entirely different class of possibility
which, in turn calls forth an entirely different order of experience.
Distinguishing the seamlessness of it all, is to distinguish the
wholeness of it all, the absoluteness of it
all, the infiniteness of it all, the such-ness of
it all, the thus-ness of it all. Living life only one day at a
time as a discontiguous sequence of days, almost always
hides the enormity of this from me. After looking into this in some
depth, it would seem to me that living life as one seamless experience,
enlivens the domain of being and
creativity
ie the domain of
who I really am,
whereas living life only one day at a time as a discontiguous sequence
of days, reinforces the domain of doing ie the domain of
what there is for me to do - regardless of whether "what
there is for me to do" overwhelms me, or whether I'm taking it all in
stride.
Did you get the Ludwig Wittgenstein
quote
with which I introduced this essay? Isn't it awesome? When
I'm concerned with (stuck in) what he calls temporal
duration (living life as a sequence of days), I miss what he
calls timelessness (living life as one seamless
experience). That's neither a bad thing nor a good thing. Rather it
illustrates how a simple new distinction can alter
reality ie alter experience, indeed alter what's possible. I
just
love
the way his quote points to living eternal life in the present ie to
living eternal life in the here and now, especially
given the way a huge percentage of we human beings are preoccupied with
living eternal life sometime in the future, yes? Ludwig's
quote's simplicity is both
decisive
and
powerful
(not to mention inspirational). I read it then re-read it more than a
few times before it's full impact and what it reveals, landed. And
when it did: "Wow!" - just "Wow!".
Here's what I
love
about
words
- not just about Ludwig's
words
but about all
words
ie about all
language,
which is to say about the
listenedword
as well as about the
spokenword
(and, to a much lesser extent, about the readword
as well as about the
writtenword):
the
power
they have (indeed, the
powerlanguage
has) to access new
worlds.
I
love
the leverage they have to reveal new dimensions, to engender new
experiences, and to
create
new possibilities. Living life as one seamless experience within which
is included living life as a discontiguous sequence of days (ie living
life as that which I call
"one day
one life") is a dimension, an experience, a possibility
brought forth entirely by
languaging.
Bringing it forth by
languaging,
is arguably the only way something as timeless as this, could ever be
brought forth.