Whenever and wherever

The world speaks in the most remarkable and surprising ways. I got on a plane this afternoon and started writing about authenticity. I hadn't gotten to it yet (before this thing happened), but what I had in mind was how much I've been stressing, more and more lately, about figuring out what I'm "supposed to do." This sense that life is slipping by and I'm wasting my time. But the insight that I wanted to write about was that this whole mentality is perhaps missing the point precisely. We are letting life slip by precisely when we live "forward," like this, when the future (the not-now) is more important than the now. Even when I am not planning for the future, still I am not in general living now. My time away from work feels so much like placeholders, like "something to do." I think I have been increasingly aware of this phenomenon in recent months, yet I don't know what do otherwise. The moments of living should be the rule rather than the exception, and yet they are unusual. I think back to a hike Kathleen and I took this summer out past Middleton. That was so great, but not because of the particular place or event, but because we were exploring. I look back on this and think, "I wish I could do that sort of this more often."

What I crave (what all of us crave), is creation or exploration (are there other things I'm missing?). I think we get paralyzed because both of these seem so big. I dream of a job where I can do one or the other, as though this is the only format in which such endeavors are satisfying. What I wanted to write about was this insistence that my job is the key to living authentically. That if and only if I can figure out the right direction for my entire life will I be living right, will I live authentically (as opposed to the superficiality in which I generally find myself). Many of us seem caught up in this. Even those I would consider very authentic, like Kathleen, struggle with this desire to integrate living and working, and this frustration when we can't have the whole thing (when the integration is not complete). But maybe that's the wrong approach. I'm going to say provisionally that it is definitely not the right approach. That instead we can just create and explore (or do whatever else is right for you) whenever and wherever we can. Nothing revolutionary here, I suppose, and yet who of us is doing this? No one I know.

So this is what I was thinking about, how to bring these things into my life. How in this new year I want to make my job just a job and do a lot more living in the rest of the space.

Resolution #7 - Create or explore something new every day.

And then I sit down next to this woman on the plane. She's reading a book full of pictures and essays and quotes, all with little "assignment" notes underneath. Like "Assignment 52: Take a flash picture underneath your bed" below a page of dust bunnies, long-lost socks, and annoyed felines. Fascinating stuff, and I'm so enthralled that she catches me looking over her shoulder (yes, I'm a classy guy, I know). Well it turns out she's an artist, and artists sort of have to appreciate voyeurism. So she's very nice about my awkwardness, and insists that I take the book for a while. The book is called Learning to Love You More," and there's a website too. They put up these "assignments" (or others submit them) on their website, and then visitors post their efforts. The book is a collection of these projects.

So I will try to do one of these a day (unless I stumble upon an independent option). I recommend that everyone do the same.