What is it all about? Life. Does it mean something and when does is it supposed to come together, coalesce, into a complete thing resembling the ideal way it's supposed to look?...I've often wondered these things about my life...And been confounded each time.
I'll be honest; I never once completed a Rubiks Cube puzzle...Not without taking it apart and reassembling it anyway; Cheating in other words. Meh, it's all good, I don't mind admitting it.
I even tried to pass my cheating off as a triumph of my ingenuity to my brothers. Of course they didn't believe me, and pummelled me for my attempted deception. Lesson learned? Nah, of course not.
Life isn't like a puzzle that can be taken apart and reassembled in perfect order, but it can be just as confounding. Life doesn't come with an instruction manual meaning it doesn't always come together perfectly - Mine doesn't anyway.
The concept of life needing to mean, or be, something in particular, that it all comes together into a thing doesn't hold much validity for me anymore. As a younger fellow I had that expectation, [hope?] that it would all just come together and *turn into something amazing at some stage. But in reality life is flawed, imperfect and rarely meets a person's ideal image of it.
I learned those lessons the hard way and regret some of the time I wasted working towards that perfect, and unattainable, ideal of my life being a thing that hard work and effort would draw together into a magnificent thing called a perfect life, or whatever other name I found for it.
I was about twenty eight years old when I realised that life was whatever I made it to be on a given day or in a given moment. It was the sum and total of my existence over all of my years: Every action and reaction, decision either impulsive or calculated, emotion, thought or feeling...It was everything combined, not just a thing that would, or could, come to be. I was in it already and all of a sudden making it the best version I could possibly make it seemed critically important.
Don't misunderstand me; My life wasn't bad prior to that epiphany. It contained bad elements of course, some I'd done willingly, and some that had been done to me, however it wasn't a bad life to that point; I was happy and healthy but looking back now I feel it was stifled somewhat, not quote as full as it could have been.
The fork took me down new paths, introduced new paradigms that opened yet more again, and eventually lead me to the concept that I hold as my life-ethos these days.
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised.
I added the tomorrow isn't promised part recently as a reminder that life is fickle and I should never make the mistake of assuming I'll have a future. Of course that doesn't mean I don't plan around having one, simply that living each moment to it's full extent is a strong focus.
I began living more in the moment...Not forgetting about future-planning but finding presence in the moments that were my life - The now. Being one hundred percent present in those moments seemed the best way to create the life I wanted and to design it moving forward.
I put aside the pursuit of that perfect thing, the ideal life that existed somewhere in the future and made my life more about what it could be right at "this moment". It brought me more enjoyment, satisfaction and a deeper sense of what life was all about for me. Life looked brighter, more vibrant and I felt things more keenly.
I made my life more about the journey rather than the destination, that perfect thing I'd hoped one day my life to turn into. By putting all those moments together as best I can, I know the rest will take care of itself.
See that Rubiks Cube floating above my hand in the picture above? That's what my life looks like...A jumbled collection of colours [the moments] all scattered but collected within the confines of the years of my life, [the cube itself]; Rather than chasing some elusive endgame I play the game on a moment by moment basis finding presence and fulfilment in each. Putting all those fulfilled moments into the years I have ahead of me is sure to return a reasonable result right?
I don't know what most other people want out of life but for Faith and I it's experiences mostly, and things that support those experiences. We work hard to design and create our best version of life and sometimes we actually attain that goal...Mostly though, it's an imperfect collection of moments, days and minutes that at the end when we are dead, will be the puzzle that was our lives. Only then will it be complete and will we know the endgame and I reckon it'll be perfect enough.
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised.
Be well
The photo is mine y'all.
