Sometimes I feel a little tortured like Van Gogh, except I still have both of my ears. I don’t really know how he felt, or what possessed him to whack off an ear, but perhaps we share some of the same existential questions, like who am I, what am I doing, why am I doing it, and why am I here?
This morning I parked myself in my Lazygirl and promptly wasted an hour and a half fiddling around with useless trivia on my iPad. Did I meditate? No. Did I journal or write a long-overdue blog? No. Did I do anything that was worthwhile with my time? No. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. Wasting time.
Oh but wait! Who said it was a waste of time? Who made that decision, based on what? And who determines what is a worthwhile use of time and what isn’t? Or anything else, for that matter. Who decides?
Finally, when I came to my senses and settled down to meditate, I was immediately beset with remorse over my lack of self-discipline. As the cloud cover of guilt started rolling in to derail my good intentions, a blessed wind of relief came along from behind and blew it off into the ethers.
Yes, okay, so you think that you wasted time. But that doesn’t mean that you have to stay stuck in a state of despair over your dalliance. You can just acknowledge that you might have preferred to have taken another path and move on.
Well that sounds like a really good plan, right?
It makes me wonder—how much precious time have I wasted guilting myself over thinking that I have wasted time? How many hours throughout my lifetime have I spent berating myself for things that I did that I shouldn’t have, or things that I should have done that I didn’t? Or for Heaven-only-knows how many other ‘sins’ I committed?
It occurs to me that we make life up as we go, day by day, minute by minute. We decide what to think, how to feel, and whether time is wasted or well spent. I’ve used up more than my fair share of time wallowing around in my wrongdoings rather than congratulating myself for the things I’ve done well. Why is that? Why does it seem so hard to turn the light to the right?
I’m blaming it all on the ego. I wonder how much of the world population suffers from the same tyranny of the ego’s antics that I sometimes do, the bullying that would have me believe that I am a guilty sinner—oh for shame, for shame? I would guess that the number would be astronomical.
I can hang out in my Lazygirl and idle my time away staring at a TV screen, or conjure up a myriad of other imaginative ways to whittle away the hours. But the question becomes: what am I going to do about it? Will I decide to change the channel and watch another version of my belief system?
So I ask myself—which is the worst ‘sin’? Is it time wasted frittering away hours indulging in useless trivia? Or is it time wasted berating oneself for wasting time with useless trivia? Now that would be the true definition of wasting time.
So who I am is me. And why I’m here is to learn whatever it is that I need to know in order to exit this lifetime with both ears still attached to the sides of my head. Nobody ever said it would be easy, right? Experience has taught me that life is easier when lived in the light than in the dark.
Yesterday two friends mentioned that they haven’t seen any blogs recently. They would be right. I haven’t written any. Why? Have I been wasting time? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I’ve just been spending precious time storing up energy and gathering my wits for whatever is coming next. Sometimes there is a need to step back and regroup.
Life. It’s all about how you look at it. Or see it. Or decide how you feel about it. We have the freedom of choice, and none of it is right, or wrong. It just is what it is. What matters is how we feel about it and what we do or don’t do about it. We are blessed with free will to do as we wish, and isn’t that wonderous thing?
When I leave the planet, I plan on taking all of my bodily parts and pieces along with me by reason of sanity. All I need to do to get there from here is to change the channel and look to the light.
Note: The photo above is courtesy of New Waves of Light, a website designed by anonymous individuals around the world who share the intention of bringing light and love to a world of darkness and chaos. (newwavesoflight.org or NWOL.us)