Along for the ride?
"To live only for a future goal is shallow."
-Robert Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Right now is just as much a part of eternity as whatever we don't know about that's coming later. Live for the now. Not because we aren't mindful of eternity, but the opposite. Because it IS eternity. We are living eternity.
-Robert Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Right now is just as much a part of eternity as whatever we don't know about that's coming later. Live for the now. Not because we aren't mindful of eternity, but the opposite. Because it IS eternity. We are living eternity.
Labels: thoughts
posted by Nate Mecham at 10:43 PM
5 Comments:
insightful thought. what inspired your reflection?
Some professors here said that we are at college getting ready for the "real" world. That just didn't sit well with me. What makes being a part of the work force any more "real" than being at college? Are my experiences less valid? My triumphs less successful? No, it is real right now. We tend to separate preparation from experience when really they are the same thing: Life. Real life. Thus to think what we are living now isn't real, but eternity some how will be is to miss out on life now.
This is only a small part of forever, though. We aren't going to be living like this for a majority of our life. This is like an extension of high school...sort of. Here we have a curfew, a boys out, and other things to keep a tight track of us, tighter than I ever had it in high school. I know this is the real world for us right now, but I think that there is something that we are preparing for, like a different real world. Why else would this be a 4 or 5 year spance of our life and parenthood, or whatever we become, lasts, hopefully, years and years longer than our school experience.
We are in the real world, but it isn't the permenant one that we are trying to get to and that is what I think the teacher was getting at.
Do you recall your experiences in Elementary school, your science fairs or spelling bees. They were part of your real world back when you were between 6-10 years old. You didn't consider that the real world, did you? Well this is kind of the same thing, it was a great accomplishment, a triumph, but now it doesn't matter as much as what you did then.
I think there is a statuate of time for triumphs, and reality, and while this is real to us now, when your first child is born you are going to be thinking that it is the real world. You will think, this is the real world, and your other triumphs won't matter so much. Like the triumph of getting an B on a math test, or things like that.
After some years, some things won't seem like they were the real world to you, even if they are just a small slice of eternity. They were the real world, and yet they weren't...well that's what I think about that, take it for what its worth.
It's true that we aren't always going to be living in our current situation, and that everything we do now is working up to another stage in life. That is precisely why we shouldn't take a moment for granted that is taking place right now.
It's okay to anticipate and prepare for the future, but we shouldn't let that preparation completely overwhelm and overrule the finer aspects of now. If we do, we may eventually regret missing out on what we had because we were so preoccupied with what we wanted.
I find it important to enjoy what we have going for us in our current situation. We need to take advantage of opportunities that we are presented with today rather than put them off to wait for those that may never find us tomorrow.
Although preparation is vital, it shouldn't always replace or take precedence over the facets of life that are applicable to now.
At no point in life are we inferior or premature to the "real world." Fifteen years ago we were the real world, even now we are still the real world, and when we're 87 years old and can do nothing more than rock on our front porches to watch cars drive by, we will still be the real world.
When different levels of responsibility confront us at different times in our lives it doesn't mean we are entering or exiting a higher realm of life. It's a different realm of life but it will always remain equally important to the one before and those to come.
If we concentrate too hard on the "real world" that we think exists outside of our own, it may be difficult to fully appreciate our "real" place in life.
Thomas S. Monson said "Sometimes we let our thoughts of tomorrow take up too much of today. Daydreaming of the past and longing for the future may provide comfort but will not take place of living in the present. This is the day of our opportunity, and we must grasp it.
"Learn from the past, prepare for the future, LIVE in today."
always preparing, never arriving.
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