Enthusiasm and vitality are not constant, regular, daily experiences. Boredom, ennui and monotony are much more reliable and frequent occurrences. And that’s a problem because we are addicted to the rush of wonder and delight, to the point of artificial applications of highs from a bottle or a pill. We will do anything to feel better about a life with not much to show for all the time we’ve put into living.
“Is this all there is?” becomes the theme song for generations looking for something more than they have been able to put together. Which is also known as, “Won’t somebody make me happy–no, thrilled–to be here, now?
Did somebody just say, “here, now?” That’s strange, because I was just thinking of here, now, and how that is all there is anywhere, all of the time. There is nothing but here, now for as far as we can see in any direction. And it is not enough! We want to spice things up and “let the good times roll!”
And that runs headlong into the Buddha’s recipe for really living: “Peaceful abiding, here, now.” Wow. Talk about a cultural clash! And Jesus is no help at all with his, “Consider the lilies of the field…” analogy and its “Bloom where you’re planted, and enjoy where you are, when you are, how you are for as long as you are,” implication.
How do we square how things are here, now with how we want them to be and wish they were? When the Blues meets the here, now, where does that leave us other than wanting something more always and forever? And how often does music and entertainment sub for “not much going on in this ol’ life, here, now”? With sex, drugs and alcohol doing their best to make up for nothing going our way? For our certainty that things ought to be different than they are, and our disappointment with “this being all there is”?
While all this time we are only a slight shift in perspective from life being packed down, over flowing, pouring out, just by seeing every moment as the opportunity to know what’s called for and do what needs to be done–by taking up the work of replacing what we want to happen with what needs to happen with the gifts that are waiting to come to life in us in the form of our original nature, our intrinsic virtues (The things we do best and enjoy doing most), our intrinsic intuition, our inherent imagination and our love for playing with the possibilities and opportunities waiting to come to life in us and through us in this old here and now, just in time to see what we can do in the time left for living!
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 