Posted by Ryan
July 29, 2008
Take a moment and think about your best friend, or several good friends. Can you remember when you first met? Was that meeting memorable? How was it different than meeting any of the hundreds or thousands of people you’ve met since then?
More likely than not, meeting your best friend, or whoever we’re thinking about here, was just like meeting anyone else: nothing special. Perhaps you were introduced through another friend, bumped into each other at school, or maybe he/she punched you in the face.
The memories I have of my best friends are there, but faded. Best childhood friend: my dad took me over to his house shortly after he moved in to meet him and his family. I think I was 5 years old. There were lots of unpacked boxes in his room and all over their house. We might have played with legos. That’s about all I remember. Two friends I’ve had for 14+ years now were public enemies number 1 and 2. I couldn’t stand them, and I’m pretty sure their feelings towards me were pretty hostile, too. Of course, looking back, I have no idea why we didn’t get along. Maybe we did the first time we met? No idea. That’s not the point though.
The point is, when I look back on those first meetings, I remember very little about what actually happened. What I do remember is the outcome. I think of how it is now. Looking at those first meetings from the perspective of someone living in that same time period, nothing special happened. Looking at it from 2008, it’s quite different.
The poem is a good example. For the most splendid line becomes fully splendid only by means of all the lines after it; if you went back to it you would find it less splendid than you thought.
- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
Perhaps you’re married. Think of the first date with your spouse. Was it that different from any other date you may have been on? Probably not. But you remember it with fondness because of what your relationship has become.
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff.
- The Tenth Doctor, Doctor Who (British sci-fi TV show), in the episode “Blink”
To think of our experiences, all the people we’ve met, everyone we really know, as being part of some time line places a brick wall between us and who we are. We aren’t on some time line. Well, perhaps we are, but I don’t see it that way. I see it like this: today is the only day there is. There is no tomorrow, there is no yesterday. There is only today. All our experiences fill our life, our today. That doesn’t mean we can’t correct mistakes; it makes correcting mistakes possible. You don’t have to change the past. You can’t change it, because it doesn’t exist. The only thing you can change is what is actually real: yourself.
A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, [Human], as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. … What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then–that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it.
- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
When you reflect on what we call the past, when you remember pleasures gone by, do not wish you could go back. Remembering pleasures is what makes the pleasure full. It makes it real.
And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back–if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?
- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis (emphasis added)
Posted by Ryan
June 15, 2007
Though I did not say it in exactly these words, last week I talked about how, for the last several weeks, I have had the work ethic of a chicken. Actually, I bet chickens have a better work ethic than I do.
I really don’t know why I keep talking about chickens. I could talk about sheep! Sheep are fun. Sorta.
So I obviously don’t know what it’d be like to be a chicken, or a sheep, or any other kind of farm animal. But from what I can tell from watching them, they have it pretty easy. I certainly don’t want to be a farm animal. I’m just comparing my situation, to the situation of a chicken. Because, you know, that’s a completely logical thing to do.
Chickens only have a few things they have to do in life. Eat, chase other chickens, eat, breed, and raise their young. My life, on the other hand, seems very complicated. There are a million things that I could do each day. A million web sites I could read. A million books I could read. Which project should I work on? Do I work on my own projects? Or do contract work?
Really though, if I take a step back and try to grasp the concept that my life is really quite as simple as the life of a chicken, I realize that my life is still way more complicated. ha! No really, my day to day focus is “to survive,” just like the chicken’s. But the difference lies in how I think about it. My approach to life is different from that of the common chicken (because there may be uncommon chickens who are really quite perplexed about what to do each day. “do I eat the grain? or maybe chase that bug over there? or maybe learn how to catch the bug and mix it with the grain, put it out in the sun to bake and then sprinkle it with a little bit of grass? and how do I keep the other chickens from eating it before I’m done?”). In other words, I complicate my life by allowing myself to lose focus.
I’m not really talking about survival though. I’m talking about priorities and how to set them.
I’m horrible at setting priorities. For example, right now I should be working, but I’m not. Instead I’m writing about how I should be working instead of writing this.
I took this picture a few weeks ago in Seattle, Washington. I was looking for the bus stop for the bus that goes to the airport so I could come back home. Along the way I saw this man feeding a bunch of pigeons. I didn’t think about it then, but looking back on the situation I wish I would have stopped and said hello. Find out who he is, what he does. Does he make it a habit to feed birds fairly often? Or was this something a little more rare that he just decided to do right then? I’ll probably never know the answers to those questions.
But now it sounds like I’m contradicting myself. First I say I should be working instead of writing, and then I say I should have stopped to talk to a guy instead of hurrying on to the bus stop. It could seem as if I’m justifying my time spent writing instead of working. Though they are different examples, I think they illustrate how priorities should be set.
Generally, you should focus your attention on the most important thing in your life; your top “priority.” That’s obvious. But what happens when you’ve lost focus of your goals? While I was hurrying to the bus stop I had the presence of mind to stop and take a picture, but I didn’t think to talk to the guy. After all, I was in a hurry to get to the airport. In other words, when you lose focus of your goals, your priorities get all messed up and you run around looking for meaning, spending all your time on your priorities and getting things done, but you’re still frustrated because your goals aren’t getting realized. Your priorities don’t match your goals.
I love the cinematography (whoa I spelled that right on my first try!) in movies and TV shows where the camera, focusing on one thing/person, switches the focus to someone/something else without changing the field of view. You see one thing, and then you see another, just by a change in focus. Matching up your goals and priorities has the same effect. I have my doubts now, but I’ve seen it work in my life before. I know it can work again. I really need it too. Right now all I see are chickens.
