Or enjoying living and substantiating one’s day to day living
I listened to the audio It is Not About Oneness but About Living and what caught my attention of it is how I’ve been reflecting on what it means to live and how we’ve extrapolated this word ‘living’ and have elevated it to something separate from ourselves, almost turning it into something that we are supposed to ‘get to do’ someday, or get to ‘attain’ somehow ‘out there’, instead of realizing that we are already IT, we are already that life and we are that potential that we have been dreaming/thinking about, we just haven’t been LIVING as it. So what does that mean?
I see how daunting it can be to look at ‘life’ and ‘living’ and try and substance these words in an ‘utmost potential’ type of idea right away with ideas, projects, dreams ‘out there’ in the future… and so we spend most of our time thinking, wishing, hoping, dreaming, planning of a moment where we can ‘finally live’ instead of realizing that we are already living, and we are wasting those moments chasing a moment that doesn’t even belong to us.
I’ve also been recently listening a lot to Jordan Peterson and something he explained in one of his discussions with Joe Rogan is how living is about all of those moments and things we repeat on a daily basis, all of those hours that we spend sharing our meals with our partners/family, all of the time spent with our children, all of the time spent on cooking, cleaning, grooming ourselves, going to work, having the normal day to day activities that we many times become frustrated with, tired of or even resist doing as a basic part of living a life in this world.
This caught my attention and particularly correlates to how I’ve been deciding to take on my day to day and really get to live my routine in a different way, because in the past I was resisting to do the basics, there was a time where I came to loathe having to eat, having to take a shower, having to do the basics for living, seeing them as a drag, a waste of time. So I had been working with seeing routine as something that assists me in structuring my day, yet it still only became a doing in a structured manner, a ‘getting things done’ only – but not yet really living, which is where I’m focusing on now.
I am learning and practicing to imprint me/ enjoy myself more in the moments of doing the day to day thing from the moment I wake up, to getting dressed, to making coffee and breakfast meals and genuinely enjoying sharing those moments and the expression that I decide to create of me while preparing meals, enjoying to decide what I’ll wear in the day, enjoying the simplicity of communicating and sharing the basic living activities; enjoying attending to my responsibilities and integrate myself fully into it to get it well done, to not half ass it or do it with the ‘least effort possible,’ but really live the decision and realization of: this is my moment, this is what’s here in front of me, for me to do so I do it the best way possible.
Interestingly enough this has also currently been including the dimension of the ability to enjoy these day to day routines, and even if the activities are basically ‘the same’ day after day, I am realizing how I can truly decide to be present and enjoy the living of these activities and discovering how it is a decision based on – in my case – doing things the best way that I can. To me that’s what satisfies me and it’s even better if I get to share these moments with others or do something that I know will benefit/support others at the same time.
In essence this also correlates to another very cool interview on Eqafe.com A Well Made Moment is a Well Made Self which I definitely could relate to and enjoyed for the same reason, where this emphasis on what we do moment by moment and doing it well, doing it to the best of our capacity is what substantiates and gives meaning to our lives.
This might seem very obvious or simplistic, but I’ve also been reflecting a lot on how many times I projected ‘my life’ as something I’d be doing in a future, way out there at some point in my life where I could finally say ‘I’m living, I’m satisfied with myself’ and kind of building this bubble of ‘greatness’ as ‘living’. I’ve been instead learning to actually appreciate the day to day moments that we take for granted, just like someone reminded me today, we take for granted the ease with which we can do ‘the day to day’ things and forget about the fact that it is a marvel that we are alive, that we can have food in our fridge and have the ability to prepare these meals, to have running water, to have a roof over our heads, to live in an environment where we can walk around and enjoy ourselves in spite of the regular things that may go astray in our societies.
I stopped for a moment to realize how true that is and how many times I had taken for granted the simplicity of enjoying being able to eat, to take a shower, to walk around, to chat with people, to enjoy hanging out with people that you enjoy being with… there are so many things that in the past I would experience as things I just have to ‘deal with’ or ‘swallow’, kind of experiencing them as these little ‘obstacles’ that I had to get through while ‘looking forward’ to something ‘more’ or ‘greater’ in my life out there/somewhere else and far away in the future. That means, I wasn’t really living, but pursuing something outside of myself while dismissing the actual life and living that happens every single moment we are here.
So this is more like a reminder for myself of how many times I’ve almost defined these basic aspects of living mentioned above that are part of my ‘living routine’ as a waste of time or ‘loss of time’ or ‘tedious things’ to do and how I am currently deciding to enjoy them, to be creative in them, to make them interesting based on how I decide to express myself while doing them all.
What I’ve noticed is that my satisfaction does emerge from doing things the best possible way, to add that spark of enjoyment and liveliness to what I do, even if it’s ‘the same’ day after day apparently, I’m learning to enjoy the simplicity of these moments in fact, which again I didn’t use to do before.
I am more and more realizing that life is happening in every moment, it is only us that may be stuck in our heads in plans, ideas, hopes, dreams of ‘what our lives can be’ instead of actually living and enjoying the totality of what we are doing in the moment, no matter how repetitive, how simplistic, how ‘monotonous’ it might seem – all of these adjectives in fact exist as experiences in our minds that become the way that we live out our day to day, always in our heads longing for ‘something more’ instead of realizing this is it! This is where we are, this is what we got, we got ourselves, we have the absolute capacity to decide how to live the moment.
So that’s how living the best that we can in everything we do actually changes the world, because we are the matter that matters and shapes the world – and yes I take this quote from that initial audio I quoted at the beginning of this blog, but it also correlates to what I’ve been hearing from Jordan Peterson – which confirms what we’ve been walking and sharing within the Desteni process – on the importance of focusing on the individual change to create social change, instead of the other way around, which is where people get lost in social justice movements, identity politics and finding culprits for why their lives can’t be as fulfilling as they compare others’ to be.
Living out day to day to the best of our ability is a real gift that we have and that I’m deciding to stop taking for granted or ‘zombing-by’ anymore. I’m grateful also for the people that have assisted me to realize how much of my life, my context and situation I had taken for granted and was getting too lost in life happening ‘out there’ and instead get back to what it means to be in physicality, its potential and enjoyment, in its simplicity.
What has emerged for me to work with/look at and fine tune from practicing this? I noticed that there is this underlying anxiety that is constantly there as a form of ‘rushing’ from all the times I have imprinted an almost ‘anxious’ way of existing where I used to take these day to day living activities as ‘obstacles,’ as things I just had to ‘rush through’ in my day to day to get to ‘do’ things, to ‘be productive’ and all other kinds of things that I regarded as my life’s mission, missing out enjoying the actual living that happens in every moment that I’m doing the day to day activities and routine.
Sometimes we do need reminders to slow down, to enjoy the ordinary in life, to enjoy the moment, to decide to live it and create it as if it was truly ‘the last day of our lives’ which I came to discover in a rather interesting way at the same time with having the idea of leaving a certain place and I made the decision to ‘enjoy the last moments’ there and then I asked myself ‘well, why am I not living this way every day? Why did I have to have this idea of ‘leaving’ as a crutch for me to decide to see things differently, to enjoy my day to day in a genuine way?’ And that was in fact a key point for me to start appreciating my day to day routine because of seeing my day to day with a different set of eyes so to speak, and I’m quite grateful then that I decided to take this new way of living the ‘day to day’ now, because it makes living much more enjoyable and not only that, but I am more aware of the expression that I can imprint in everything that I am doing, more aware of the kind of words I’m living in the matter that I am, and so making sure I matter in the basics, in the ‘little things’ that I do as part of my day to day living.
So that’s something to try out, to live everyday as if it was your ‘last day’ and then see how to integrate that into one’s day to day living as a new way of living – of course not with the fear of loss or fear of dying or whatever else – but as if it was truly one’s last chance to fully enjoy that meal that one likes eating, fully enjoying that cup of coffee, that walk out in the streets, that going to the movies, that doing our tasks and job the best that we can, that simple conversation with someone that we can enjoy communicating with, that best version of ourselves that can interact with others, enjoying the basic elements of living and living responsibly with it all.
I don’t intend to sound all ‘blissful’ and magical here, lol – because this entails actual doing, actual dedication, actual focus and detail into what one does because giving or creating that best of ourselves in every moment requires that, and that’s what I am deciding to integrate as part of what makes me fulfilled, satisfied on a daily basis, savoring the moment if you will instead of living more in my head and waiting for ‘better times’ in the future – nope, instead I realize I’m here, I decide what I make of it = I decide how I live myself, that’s my essential creative power.
Thanks for reading.
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