They tell you to be here now but they don't unpack what that means, now do they?
I was talking a bit previously about trying to be practice-centered rather than outcome-centered. On accepting that maintenance is endless without getting too tired or frustrated about it. That’s a really hard thing for me. I’ve always gotten my little thrill of reward from completing things, getting the job done, and focusing on the journey as something more than a process to be gotten over with is not really how my brain has ever worked.
But it occurs to me that in the long run, all of the outcomes are bad (if I may assign an arbitrary judgment to them) because in the longest run, it’s either heat death or the big squeeze, and either way the universe ends. And the odds that, one way or another, our species will be around to see it are pretty slim.
The gamification of everything contributes to the idea that all of those processes we have to do every day are just grinding, too, I think. If you go for a walk in order to put the “exercise” sticker in your planner or tick off “walk” in your habit tracker, what you’re doing more or less is turning the walk into a thing to be gotten over with, rather than enjoyed for its own sake. It’s so easy to be goal-oriented rather than process-oriented, and the older I get the more I think maybe that’s not always healthy.
Even on the treadmill, in weather too terrible to go outside, there’s more to it than just grinding. (Though grinding is harder to avoid under those circumstances.) But even shoveling snow can be satisfying.
Though my shoulders no longer agree with that assessment, especially the next day.
Obviously one needs to be a little bit goal oriented because goals need to be completed or sooner or later the roof falls in. But maybe part of the process is finishing the thing and moving on to the next thing?
Anyway I think I’m going to go for a walk and see if I can enjoy it. ;) Even if it is a bit cold outside.