Sweltering in the heat, disappointment on the job front, anxiety about Hayden’s upcoming Ironman … the elements of this February are for me exactly the same as last year’s, and actually pretty similar to many of my previous Februaries. In the absence of a day job, I have been watching Dr Phil and he has told me more than once: if you keep doing what you always did, you'll keep getting what you always got.
Actually, quite a lot of what Dr Phil says is pretty sensible. At least he doesn't advise people to live each day as if it was their last. I'm sick of getting told to do that (and I really enjoyed Stranger than Fiction, the story of a man who thought he was going to die then didn't). Here's my advice for any advice-givers out there: please find a new flip phrase with which to try to jolt us from our lazy procrastination.
I'm thinking that it is high time I stopped living as though I was going to die tomorrow. I need to be less in the moment. I need to start working on the assumption that, quite probably, I'm going to be around, day in day out, for some time to come. There's skill in withstanding the mundane, the slightly uncomfortable or inconvenient. I think I need to work on that.
4 comments:
How about:
“Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.”
- Jules Renard.
And I do like to eat before I get hungry.
Do you think I'm on the right track?
never live each day like it's your last. imagine calling all your loved ones up every morning to say goodbye, all the sobbing, all the weeping. then the wait for the inevitable as you make your ammends with god by not doing anything naughty and attending church... only to wake up the next morning having to do it all over again.
I think you are on to something with the not living every day as your last. Too easy to run up the credit cards and tell your boss what you really think.
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