Some many lovely places to visit
Some many excellent steaks to eat
More friends that I can manage to stay close to
+ More life-enhancing books than I can read
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Adds up to too much of many, many good things
This is somewhat the reverse of the situation described in one of my favorite poems: The Pessimist, who lamented more than 100 years ago there was nothing to breathe but air, nothing to eat but food. The situation is even more dire when the alternatives are all swell, simply peachy and yet there is not time nor belly nor strength to take them all. The situation of the publisher with world-class manuscripts arriving every day unbidden who is simply not able to publish even half of them. The Admissions officer with 10 or 100 excellent, promising, worthy applicants for every seat in next year's class.
Three years ago, I wrote:
I always liked the laments in the poem "The Pessimist" that there is "nothing to breathe but air" and "nothing to eat but food". It just tickles me that we don't normally get depressed about breathing the same old mixture of atmosphere while the much rarer displays of reality tv don't appeal to me. That poem ends with the poet's recommendation to use common sense. Purposely putting my attention on what I have right now deepens my satisfaction with the whole business of living.
Karen Maezen Miller puts it like this:
"It always goes, you see, this life of ours. It goes the way it goes, moment after moment. The point is, do we see it without blinding ourselves with our preconceptions and biases? Without rejecting the unexpected or pursuing the ideal? The search for greater meaning robs our life of meaning. The pursuit of higher purpose leaves us purposeless. The world doesn't need another wanderlusting soul seeker. It needs a home maker - me- to make my home within it."
Sam Harris in Waking Up says:
It is always now. This might sound trite, but it is the truth. It's not quite true as a matter of neurology, because our minds are built upon layers of inputs whose timing we know must be different. But it is true as a matter of conscious experience. The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world. But we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth— overlooking it, fleeing it, repudiating it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to avoid being happy while struggling to become happy , fulfilling one desire after the next, banishing our fears, grasping at pleasure, recoiling from pain— and thinking, interminably, about how best to keep the whole works up and running.
Harris, Sam (2014-09-09). Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (Kindle Locations 483-489). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
