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I hate to be this guy, but I'm going to provide an un-referenced quote. The title "Why aren't you having more"" comes from a present day adventurer/explorer I heard interviewed on a National Geographic program a few years back. After the interviewer reels off a staggering list of travel destinations and feats of derring-do our unnamed explorer had braved the interviewer asks "Why do you seek out and have so many adventures?' to which the unnamed adventurer fires back "Why aren't you having more?"
Rather than answer the question, he then proceeds to say that instead of others finding him puzzling for filling his life with so much he wonders how the vast majority of us can be so incurious or unwilling to engage in even small adventures. He goes on to mention how he was recently picked up at the airport and the driver (a resident of the area) points out an unusual rock formation next to the road. The unnamed adventurer asks what it's like on top of it? The driver didn't know, They had never bothered to stop and walk up to it let alone climb to the top of the rock formation they themselves wondered about.
The adventurer goes on to say adventures don't always have to be on the grand scale, most aren't, and he fails to see how even these small journeys off of the beaten path seldom seem to be taken. So true? (At least, in my case.)
That conversational exchange has stayed with me for years and I would love to be able to credit the man who opened up my thinking about this, but, there you go.
That question "Why aren't you having more?" can be extrapolated to so much of our lives. To our training--"Why aren't we doing more?" To our curiosity (both intellectual and physical) "Why aren't we exploring more?" To our relationships "Why aren't we loving more or paying more attention?" and on and on.
Life is very much an economic exchange in which time is the currency with which we designate value. We pay for tangible things with our money, but we pay for the intangibles with time; literally we pay attention to what we value. Where we see the majority of our time and attention paid in our free time (not work time as that is bought and paid for with a check) is what we have decided to be of most value as we are purchasing that moment with our time. Where we pay our attention is our advertisement to the world as to what we value.
So, we must ask ourselves is there any discrepancy between what we say we value and what we actually spend our attention on?
Do we say "I'm all about training" but spend more time reading essays and blogs about training (this one for example) than actually training?
Do we say we value our family but find that chime of a new text coming in on the "smartphone" a bit more alluring than the living breathing so-called important folks right here in front us?
You get the idea.
Why aren't we having more?
To that I'll offer a possible answer in the form of a quote I can source, the late Michael Crichton: "In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained."
I'm not saying this is THE answer, but it seems a mighty compelling one. Are we not having more of whatever we presumably value because the ability to distract ourselves is at an all time high?
Now, I think all of us (well, most) admire and would like to emulate the attitude of the un-named explorer and we often make grand and bold plans that go well for a bit and then often run into this form of roadblock, "It's been a tough week, so I think I'll get started on those plans tomorrow." No harm there right?
The Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, offered this retort to a student who professed grand plans of learning and moral deeds he was planning on starting the next day, "So, tomorrow you shall be a good man, what does that make you today?"
Ouch!
If we applied this logic to all grand plans in our lives we can see that un-stated opposite in each pronouncement we make: "Tomorrow I'll start that diet, today I shall be fat." ""I'll train hard starting tomorrow, today I am lazy." "Tomorrow I'm going to start reading more, today I am content with my current level of ignorance."
If we want more, more of anything we must pay for it--sometimes with money, but always with time and always with attention. So, what are we all paying for right now, investing in with our time and attention?
Shall we reach our death beds and be pleased with the number of tweets we've re-tweeted? Will our status updates be a noble monument of a life boldly led? Will we have spent more time thinking about that annoying guy at work, or who will be the next Batman, or wondering will it rain over the weekend than you have thinking about your friends and family? Will our loved ones remember fond times together with the person who half-heartedly spent time with them while checking how the game was going on his phone? Will our ratio of "I'll train tomorrows" exceed "I trained todays"?
I hector no one with any of this, I offer it simply as what I found to be a compelling wake-up call, a lesson from a man I can't name. I close and ask you to ask yourself a question that I ask myself every morning: "Why aren't you having more?" "Am I proud of what I am buying with my time, right now?"
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