how not what
- Focus on how. not what
- The basic premise is that all there is is now
- So how you live now is how you live at anytime.
- So focus on how you live. And if you can figure out how to work now with joy then you’ll get better at it.
- Instead what we’re told is that we should start with why. and if you have the right why then any how is bearable.
- It’s setting up the carrot. A carrot whose promise is never fulfilled.
- Because when you get there it recedes back from you.
- and fear because your purpose might not come true because of a global pandemic. an existential fear that if that how didn’t come through all of this bearing of the what was for no use.
- So what does one do?
- Focus on the how. This moment. This pleasure.
- Why don’t we?
- We’re told we’re lazy, and prone to pretty bad habits. That if we’re left to our own devices we’ll end up watching TV and goofing off. That we have so much potential and that if we applied ourselves then we’d be capable of “so much more”
- This statement is universal. My parents said this to me and I’m saying this to my daughter.
- But it’s not great advice. Because it misses the game we’re playing.
- Alan Watts says we live life like it’s a destination we’re trying to arrive at. But he says life is more like a dance or a symphony.
- Imagine a symphony’s point were to get to the end. Then the best musicians would be those who played the fastest. You’d get to concert and they’d just be one loud cymbal crashing.
- It’s the journey. This is such a trite thing to say and the reason it is because the thought I hold in my head is that the journey to where I am going sucks
- and it’s supposed to suck. It’s like having to walk past the desserts on the way to the salad bar. This is how life is supposed to be. Because the healthy people eat salad.