An interesting response came the other night from Gary. I was sitting on the couch watching TV and working on my laptop. As I was shutting my laptop down and closing the recliner to get up I said to Gary “I really need to get my life together!”. To this Gary literally laughed out loud and said, “If you need to get YOUR life together we are all in trouble”. He actually made me laugh at the ridiculousness of the statement! To this brief, comical encounter I offer you the last of the Self-Series.
I often pontificate on the life I have and if it is indeed the life I want. I do this because I am of the belief that we are the ultimate creators of our life through our choices. We come into this world alone and we leave it presumably alone and yet how we live is so frequently dependent on others. Seems an oxymoron of statements. The reality is that even as we live with others we are on our own in defining life as we live it.
I feel that I have become an expert at creating the blueprints that define the life I want to live and then creating or architecting that existence. Unless I am tired, distracted, happy, sad, content, etc. You name it and it has the ability to throw me off of the plan and leave me with all of the pieces and parts that I attempted to set in motion lying around me. Pulling from my recent “Self-Series” it would seem that self-discipline, self-motivation and a bit of self-control could solve for any distraction, yet here I sit.
My ability to summon the self-discipline/motivation/control can certainly push beyond my mood or state of being in the short-term. It is the long-haul that is put to the test when the only consequence is yourself. If I am not letting anyone else down then why does it matter if I don’t run, write, read, sleep, _____________. But the reality is that letting myself down is the worst thing I could do because I matter and what matters to me, matters.
The life I want requires many things from the “self” but most importantly the result of the life I want is to feel satisfied with what I am doing, who I am and how I live it. The only way to do this is to not be dependent on others or situations. You have to be willing to live despite it all. I used to say “I will be happy when_________”, “Things will be perfect when_______.”, you fill in the blanks. And then I got to __________ and nothing changed relative to my happiness beyond what it already was prior to the condition I was summoning.
Today, this weekend and even some of last week, I was living my “best” life. Life fulfilled with those that matter most, doing the things that matter to me and finding value in that simplicity. Don’t make it harder than it has to be, live it simply. Live it without conditions and live it now, right where you are…today, this minute…now.
Live as I see it — L.
Originally published at http://alwaysstarting.com on October 27, 2019.