Of those of you that have realised life is so dreadfully short.
How did we get to June.
why have I have left this for so long.
There is a thing I must do, and it’s this.
The opposite of what I feel that I should.
You, know. Not wanting to make the calls. Not wanting to take the chance. Not getting rid of the crappy customers. These things are super powers and should form the basis for a new life going forward.
I now know this. Not asking myself the question on a regular basis means there is never any focus on it. The thing.
What can I do now that will improve my looking forward. What is that.
Why am I not doing it?
As I now realise, the only thing I can rely on. The only thing that I can absolutely say is going to happen and the timing of that I have little or no control over is my death.
As long as I live, then this is my certainty. Sure I’ve read quite a lot of the Stoics stuff, memento mori and all that. But I haven’t really listened. In my head, I am still that troubled fifteen year old, the one with a life ahead of me. But I know, by the stiffness in my joints in the morning, by my inability to do things that I have always done – I am getting older.
Still, every day I have to remind myself that the clock is ticking. I don’t have the time to do all the things I need to do nor do I have the inclination to work with everyone, to solve everyone’s problems.
If only eh! If only I’d have known that when I was twenty or thirty, hell even forty or fifty would have been been an excellent starting point. As I get to sixty and beyond I find myself finally accepting the fact that life really is a lot shorter than I think. That some of my time should have been spent getting involved politically with some issues.
I did manage to change one part of the last Pensions Act – took two years. I have managed to educate others in the area of drug harms and misuse. I also gave up alcohol late and didn’t really discover meditation until my fifties.
For sure, I have some ‘if only’s’ and that is not good. Simply because I didn’t focus, didn’t quite get a shimmy on, didn’t quite move fast enough. Instead I faffed. I deliberated and didn’t take the action in the areas that I knew I should.
Not anymore, now I am starting to recognise the time wasters. Understand how my mind distracts me. Pulls me off in a different direction. It’s called being mindless.
You and I spend far too much time there.
Mindless activities, things and people that don’t serve you. Stuck with thoughts that don’t help you or give you the kick to move in another direction. Get focused.
You and I are there quite a lot. It’s mad.
Then we get stuck in the ‘I F O N L Y’s’ and it does not serve us at all.
One of the signs of depression is rumination, going over the same thoughts over and over again. Hoping that somehow a solution will appear – and of course it never does. The same thought, the ones you give attention to keep coming back for more. The if only is just a variation on this – and it doesn’t help.
The past is gone, what you could have said, what you should have said is gone. You can do nowt about it. Then the future calls…
Next time, you’ll do x or y. Only, the moment will be different. Moments don’t last that is why they are called moments. All we ever have is the present. Nothing else exists. Yet.
Your rumination, your worry about the future – all meaningless. When the moment arrives you’ll be prepared I promise you. In order to make the most of now, this moment and in order to make it perfect…
You and I need to do that thing, that one we promised would, that we would be the change, we can change. And we do that by not accepting the invite to the party, not going on holiday with them this year. By not working with that client anymore, not taking on the extra responsibility for the problems in a ‘not my circus, not my monkey’s way’ . One thing at a time to slowly focus on you and your life.
Very soon you’ll be dead, very soon something will happen to make you realise this. I wish I’d read this in my twenties, or forties. There is no doubt, I would have made different choices.
When you are ready to get a shimmy on with some of this, get in touch.