Lou sent this quote to me and David one day. I don’t recall the context and don’t have the patience to sort through the Facebook wall to track it back, but it’s one of those things that shook both of our worlds. I think about this quote form time to time, and for some reason, it popped into my head when I was making today’s entry.
The Dalai Lama was asked what surprised him most about humanity.
He responded with this: “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or future; he lives as if he is never going to die, then dies having never really lived.”
Of all the creatures on this earth, we are the only life-form that make life so damn difficult. It’s our greatest gift and our largest weakness. Every other species’ entire focus is on the next breath, sustaining life for another moment. We, on the other hand, appear to do everything possible to somehow counter that. We are all guilty of it in some way, shape, or form in our day-to-day.
When I think about David and myself, and I mean when I really honestly think about it, I think of all the time we both spent worrying. We worried about possible future outcomes and created so many complex scenarios of what might happen. While missing the “now.” Ask anybody who has tried to date me, and I bet they will tell you, “The toughest thing about Tim is his lack of presence even when he is present.” No matter how good the moment, my first thought always is, “This is good, but it could be better.” I struggle with it every waking moment of my life.
David struggled with his humanity so severely it cost him his life… “having never really lived.” And that is a shame.
The only thing I’ve come up with is to be aware, and if it feels like “living,” it probably is. At that moment, shut off the rationale and turn up the volume on emotional input. Live Life. Consume it. Devour it. Treat it like a first kiss you’ve been anticipating all of your life. Find something in that moment to hold onto, and let it lead you.
It’s living in the present that allows us to live in the future and to have actually know we have lived when our inevitable time comes.
NOTE:
(A book that our grandfather gave our mom (which she subsequently gave copies to both me and David) is Dale Carnegie’s Stop Worrying and Start Living. I highly recommend this book if you find yourself worrying about things a lot. I refer to it often, and it seems to ground me when I am spinning out of control.)
