The art of living
Got the urge to “pick the pen up” after two years… I saw a snippet of a podcast the other day and this guy was talking about how small the Earth is, and in the same vein about how small we are compared to the universe. He talked about how if you zoom all the way out and look back at Earth, we’re on this small floating blue dot. I think we get lost in our day to day, what bills we have to pay, what’s going on at work, and forget that we’re all on this tiny floating blue dot together, sharing the human experience together. We forget how lucky we are to live this life, and in the same vein, forget to live. The question "What’s the meaning of life?” gets posed all the time. You may have asked yourself this recently. I know it’s come up a lot for me in the last two years. Whether you’re looking for the meaning or purpose, I think the answer has always been the same - to truly live and enjoy your life and all the experiences that come with it. But what’s keeping us from doing that?
I think a large part of our “problem”, mine included, is the society that we find ourselves in. Everything these days points to social media. What to buy. How to dress. What to watch. What to listen to. What’s “popular”. How to “live”. I think we’ve lost our sense of living and instead allow ourselves to be influenced by everything we see on our phones and in the media. Just look at the reaction to when tik tok was down for literally like 8 hours and that’ll show you most everything you need to know. Social media influencers may be some of the most powerful people out there. We all follow and pay attention to them in some form or fashion. At the end of the day, whether you like what they’re posting/doing, they still capture and “rob” us of our time. Granted, that’s not to say they’re all bad. Like with most things, there’s checks and balances. Finding a good middle ground and guarding your time should be the focus, which I along with millions of other Americans, struggle with. I’ve found myself looking at a post and thinking “damn that looks fun” or “I wish I could do that”. The thing I have to remind myself is that I can. There’s nothing stopping me, or any of us from doing whatever we want and taking our time back. Nothing stopping us from picking up a new hobby, or going somewhere new, getting out more, or whatever it is you may find yourself always coming back to in your mind. Time is the only consistent thing we will ever own in our whole life.
There’s a video I saw last year of this man being interviewed in a park while he’s painting in which he says “It is a privilege to be alive. It’s a privilege. It's a privilege to love. It’s a privilege to talk. It’s a privilege to make things. I should say, you can make a statement like that, ‘It’s a joy to be alive’, and hold two things at once. Sometimes it’s so immensely painful. Sometimes it hurts to be alive. It’s all part of one feeling. They don’t cancel one another out. I just love being alive because I’m alive. I’m alive because I love my wife. And I’ve got kids and I adore them. And I love my neighbors and I love people I don’t know. Even the people I don’t get along with. It’s like we’re all here and this is our experience and it’s just one of great gratitude and pleasures.”
I love that whole statement and I think that’s the answer. Remembering the privilege and blessing it is that God chose us to wake up each morning that He does. It’s a privilege to get snowed in the house for the weekend. To go to class. Work. Have a bad day. Make a new connection with someone. Wake up with a cold. It’s all a privilege because it means we’re still here and living. All a part of the same experience. And that experience is shared in some way by the random person you walked past on the street or the person you sped by on the highway because they were driving too slow. It all comes back to these moments. And that’s where I think we get the answer.