It has been a week since I posted a flower picture.
And this week, it was a toss up between the blooming lilacs which smell awesome, or the dahlias I planted in the pot outside our front door. The dahlias won this round, because with a little bit of editing, they look a bit like a painting that would be on an old woman's wall, or her pillowcase. And well, old women and myself are like kindred spirits.
I am okay being an old person.
Some say "age is just a number" but the fact is, those numbers are pretty representative of likely condition. Of course, there is a lot of variation nowadays as there is such a wide variety in the way people live their lives, but all things remaining equal, it is pretty predictable.
With a client today I was rambling on toward the end of the session about how we should "live in the moment" in the sense of being attentive, but not care about whether that moment feels good or bad. Because, quite often the things that we need to do to be able to have options later on, don't feel that good right now. Eating healthy doesn't generate as much immediate pleasure than eating unhealthy, but over time, it matters. Similarly (and what we were talking about in the session), the tasks of a job that need to be done might not feel great, but they can lead to much greater opportunity later. In this case, my client has changed company and role and even though logically he knows he made the right choice, the current challenges of a role that he hasn't done before compared to a role he was used to and very good at, makes him question his decision to move.
He made the right call.
Being comfortable in a career is fine, but it also comes with a range of limitations, meaning that there can be a ceiling on progression depending on the career path. While he still had a way to go had he stayed where he was, the change he made is into a field that is going to see some very large growth and investment over the next several years at least, and with that comes more opportunity and far more job security, which is at a premium in today's employment market in Finland.
Personally, I wish I had made some bolder decisions when I was much younger, because playing it safe has made it difficult now to get out from under the various ceilings and over the roadblocks. At the time, I thought I was making the right calls of course, but in the end it was comfort-seeking, even though it wasn't very comfortable. I should have instead put myself into far more discomfort and hardship early to build a stronger foundation for later, but like many I suppose, I didn't feel I could, or it was never the right time, or I had some justifying reason to keep doing what I was doing.
There is always tomorrow.
No, there isn't.
We all run out of tomorrows eventually, which means we should be doing what is needed today. Not what is wanted, what is needed. It might not be fun at the time, but it is less fun to be a decade or three down the track with limited opportunity and increased hardship because the foundation wasn't built deeply or reinforced enough. This goes for careers, and for bodies. Do what you want with both, and pay the price later.
That said, there are no guarantees that doing what is needed now is going to reap rewards later, which is why so many people take the "live in the moment approach" to mean, spend in the moment and chase pleasure in the moment instead. They think it is a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush position, but in reality, they are betting against themselves, rather than playing the odds. The odds are, investing now will see greater gains than spending now.
Pretty easy.
But investing is painful, or at least, uncomfortable. It is giving up the opportunity for something now in the hope for something greater in return later, and many of us (myself included) often take the short gain, even when we know we shouldn't. But it is far easier to justify to ourselves the actions that lead to an immediate return, than the ones that have an immediate cost.
Now or later though, there is always a cost.
Taraz
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