Monday, June 23, 2008

Sit Back, Enjoy the Ride

I’m as active as I’ve been since I was a child, active in the sense of being completely engaged in something with body, soul, and spirit because I’m really enjoying it. This hasn’t been true for most of my life. I didn’t see it at the time, because, like all of us, I was too caught up in the activity itself. When you stand back after several decades and look over your life, you see that life is a boring journey with just enough enjoyment and tragedy to distract you from the boredom. I admit, I really look forward to being in a place where, I trust, it will be this kind of pleasurable, productive activity all of the time, activity that will be hard to distinguish from play.

There’s really nothing that lasts, thank God. Those things that we thought were wonderful triumphs, or even terrible mistakes, were just lessons planned for us. We had nothing to say about them. We thought we were initiating them, but we didn’t. They just happened, and the same thing is happening now. I don’t have to plan. I never did. It just felt as though I was planning. Now I am conscious of the fact that I am not planning anything, and it is a delight to see my day unfold as prepared by some all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present force without me having to do anything except sit back and enjoy the ride.

The best part of getting old is realizing that there really is no such thing as free will, and thank God. I can just enjoy this ride like I did when I was a child. I’m very blessed in that I don’t have many people in my life, and nobody that I’m really responsible for, so I don’t have people telling me, “You’re doing it wrong. You should have done it that way.” I can just enjoy my day as it unfolds without any critical voice to spoil it. When I’m in a place with lots of people, and I’m by myself, and I’m having to listen to conversations that I don’t want to hear, what strikes me is how judgmental everyone is. Everyone is trying to help everyone else out, with advice that they didn’t ask for and don’t want, and we ALL do it, me included. Except of course when I’m by myself, and I’m the only one that I can give advice to, and since I always like my advice, that’s O.K.

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