An epiphany. An invitation.
"You can have information, or you can have a life. You can't have both."
Doug's Law
I've come face-to-face with a particular realization, one that I can't be certain to accurately describe here, but I'll try.
Idea Number One: I can choose to either commit to creating the most wondrous and beautiful things of which I'm capable and throwing them out into the world for others to experience, or I can immerse and expose myself as much as possible in all the other wondrous and beautiful things that are already in the world.
Idea Number Two: By consciously choosing to engage in either one of these choices, I will in all likelihood come to the other as a result.
The problem right now is that I am doing neither fully. I play some music, I see some creative events, but to nowhere near the extent that I either could or should be. This is the reason for my current mediocrity. Instead of seeing all that the world around me has to offer, I am instead distracting myself with news and "information" with which I can do nothing. The world is full of injustice and unfairness, acts of varying degrees of dishonesty or cruelty. This information has not gotten me any closer to discovering and living a meaningful, joyous life for myself or for those around me.
W.H. Auden said that we owe it to others to get on with what we're good at. At this point, I think that I owe it to myself first of all. The world will come afterwards. I am alive, but I am not living. Like the difference between hearing and listening, between seeing and looking, life needs to be an active experience, a deliberate exercise of discovering or doing as much as possible those things or experiences that will remind me of just how incredible it is to be alive, right here, right now.
Some day, I am going to die. My fear of death has not abated. All I can tell myself is: if I'm going to die someday, then I had better get on with living while I still can.
Join me.
Originally posted at my Dreamwidth blog. Sorry, LJ.
Doug's Law
I've come face-to-face with a particular realization, one that I can't be certain to accurately describe here, but I'll try.
Idea Number One: I can choose to either commit to creating the most wondrous and beautiful things of which I'm capable and throwing them out into the world for others to experience, or I can immerse and expose myself as much as possible in all the other wondrous and beautiful things that are already in the world.
Idea Number Two: By consciously choosing to engage in either one of these choices, I will in all likelihood come to the other as a result.
The problem right now is that I am doing neither fully. I play some music, I see some creative events, but to nowhere near the extent that I either could or should be. This is the reason for my current mediocrity. Instead of seeing all that the world around me has to offer, I am instead distracting myself with news and "information" with which I can do nothing. The world is full of injustice and unfairness, acts of varying degrees of dishonesty or cruelty. This information has not gotten me any closer to discovering and living a meaningful, joyous life for myself or for those around me.
W.H. Auden said that we owe it to others to get on with what we're good at. At this point, I think that I owe it to myself first of all. The world will come afterwards. I am alive, but I am not living. Like the difference between hearing and listening, between seeing and looking, life needs to be an active experience, a deliberate exercise of discovering or doing as much as possible those things or experiences that will remind me of just how incredible it is to be alive, right here, right now.
Some day, I am going to die. My fear of death has not abated. All I can tell myself is: if I'm going to die someday, then I had better get on with living while I still can.
Join me.
Originally posted at my Dreamwidth blog. Sorry, LJ.