Blinded By The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

greer184 (59)in #thoughts • 7 years ago

I can't wait until those brownies in the oven are finished. With a nice, cold glass of milk. Only 20 minutes away. I can't wait until I finish this run. I will take a nice cold shower and have a big and warm breakfast. Only 1 hour away. I can't wait until the work week is over. Just me and a nice cold beer, and I can finish watching the third season of Breaking Bad. Only three days away. I can't wait until I'm rich. I'll buy a mansion and a nice convertible that I'll drive through the hills on the weekends. Only a decade or two away.

When I'm rich, I'll be spending my evenings listening to the waves crash on the beach...

In The Meanwhile

I could do something productive while I stand next to this oven. I mean I don't have to just wait here and do nothing. I'll check Twitter. I could meditate and think about life while I'm running. My knees are kind of bothering though. I'll turn up the music louder on my phone. I could finish that code I promised for my next meeting today. But the meeting is Friday afternoon and I'm tired of coding. I wonder what everyone is up to on Facebook. Well, it's Saturday. I could always go to the park with my dog or hang out with my friends. I don't feel like getting out of bed. Let me look for my dream car, that way I know what I want when the day comes that I'm ready to make that purchase.

Blinded By The Light

Luckily, my life is only partially reflected in the passages above. But too often I spend my time anticipating rather than focusing my mentality on the present moment. I waste so much time looking at some future point. Sometimes I'm just floating through life and never take time to appreciate the scenery along this river we call life. It is so easy to focus on a more desirable future event. Regular life is so mundane. So instead of confronting this mundane life, I waste time delaying my suffering until I arrive at the promised land. But the promised land is never as good as I imagine. Luckily, I have other events in my future that I can fixate my mind upon. That way I way I can convince myself the discomfort is worth it by dangling a non-existent carrot just far enough in the future I can never catch up to it.

Trust The Process?

There are those that advocate enjoying the journey. Enjoy the trip rather than focusing on the destination. Focusing on the line in between rather than Point B, Point C, etc. If we enjoyed the process than we wouldn't have to dangle a carrot in the future. We would be eating the carrot forever in the present. But what about when I suffer? The suffering and non-suffering pieces of life seem to push our minds into the first mentality rather than the second. Anticipating the good and trying to survive the bad. But this hypes the good and then the good is not quite as good as we hyped it up to be.

Some people seek pleasure from food, but at times it feels empty even though it feels better. Some people seek to stop short of a goal because of the resistance to that goal, but while the resistance is gone, you feel disappointed you could not push through it. Some people look to the end of the week, but spend the weekend not doing what they truly want to do, just to be disappointed that it is already Sunday evening. Some people think it might all be better in the future, but are they willing to work for it or they are trying to suppress the fact the present is too much to bear sometimes.

Maybe its only dark right here because we threw the flashlight further in the tunnel. Every time we reach it, we throw it deeper into the tunnel. There is no light at the end of the tunnel because there is no end.