Remember the famous Lennon quote from Beautiful Boy?": "Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans." I spend my time scrambling around, working on my "other plans," trying to get them out of the way so that I can focus on my "life" stuff, the stuff I want to do, the stuff I look forward to. I know I'm not the only one who does that. I think we all sequence stuff like that. I mean, we HAVE to, to some degree. Whether we want to or not, most of us HAVE to do the mundane stuff, the house stuff, in some cases (like me) the work stuff that keeps some income coming in....all the necessary, but not necessarily pleasant or likable stuff, that keeps things running smoothly. It's been a slowly dawning realization to me that all those "other plans", all the things I scramble to get done so I can get to the stuff I want to do..those things ARE my life! Those plans comprise my life, every bit as much as the stuff I WANT to get to. I've wasted a lot of time not being in the moment with ALL my stuff, all my plans, all my life, because I'm focused on some nebulous future "life" that is going to be able to happen once I rush through getting A and B and C accomplished! Wow. Is it just me?
No you're not alone Ronni. I've had to stop chasing my tail trying to get up to date with everything so that I can concentrate on what I want to do. I actually find that I have more time for myself now and that dust doesn't go away if it's left an extra day and that things like mending, shopping and other 'stuff' can wait as it's really not as important as I once thought it was.
You're definitely not the only one. Sometimes the Minutia become the Mountain and you keep thinking if you could climb it you'd have an easy walk on the other side but really you just need to keep MINDFULLY putting one foot in front of the other.
One of my friends said something interesting to me when I was talking to her about this. "I feel like this life that I have right now is just a placeholder." Wow. I'm not even sure why that resonated with me as much as it did, other than having vaguely similar feelings. Like I'm just marking time doing all those "other" things till I can actually start to live life! It's a weird zone actually, that's difficult to describe. Also as you point out Islandlife, mindfulness is definitely a part of it. I've been researching that, actually. It suggests that the mind is fully attending to what’s happening, to what you’re doing, to the space you’re moving through. I love this definition of it: Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us. Whenever you bring awareness to what you’re directly experiencing via your senses, or to your state of mind via your thoughts and emotions, you’re being mindful. Sounds so easy and simple, right? It's not....well for me it's not. There's a sort of zen aspect to it that I find a great deal of difficulty attaining. No matter what I'm doing, I not always right there in the moment. I'm thinking about the next step, or what I'm going to say, or the backlogged laundry that's waiting for me, or mentally comprising a to do list. And I think that detracts from my ability to just live life, in the moment.
