Wasting Time (Part 1)
Do you ever feel like you are wasting time; the most precious natural resource that we have? I've been finding myself doing things that I know don't really matter. I've been replaying video games and watching movies that I've seen a million times. I quote every line before they do.
I've been thinking that there must be something much more to life than waiting for it to start.
As the risk of sounding trendy, although I'm probably a few months late for that anyway, I was reading the Great Gatsby. It is a very sad book and although the man who wrote the forward clearly stated that there was no moral, I found one line in particular very interesting. It was toward the end of the book after Gatsby dies (spoilers) and Carraway is trying to talk another character into going to the funeral. However, the character doesn't want to go. "Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead," he says, "After that my own rule is to let everything alone." That really struck me for some reason. I think it was because there is a broader application to life within that line.
Personally, I've been noticing that, in a lot of ways, I have been avoiding life. Either out of fear or the possibility of failure or whatever, I have been hiding in my hobbit hole while the world pounds away at my door, its thundering voice unheeded, and its adventurous stories ignored. When I read that line, it reminded me in a strange way, that I am alive. Things must be done now if they are going to be done at all just as friendship must be offered while friends are living, not after they are dead.
Before this goes where it seems to be going: into the vague, unrealistic clouds of dreams and Hollywood, let me just say that this is not another imperative to plea to go out and live life no matter what the cost. I am not F. Scott Fitzgerald and I am not being advocated by Coke. This is simply, in a small way, a reminder that we are being invited, with each breath and new dawn, to live intentionally and be who we are going to be.
This week I've thrown open a few windows in my hobbit hole and am going to try to throw open a few more. Maybe its time to listen to the thundering voice, a few stories, and take another step into a world that has held me captive for so long.
I've been thinking that there must be something much more to life than waiting for it to start.
As the risk of sounding trendy, although I'm probably a few months late for that anyway, I was reading the Great Gatsby. It is a very sad book and although the man who wrote the forward clearly stated that there was no moral, I found one line in particular very interesting. It was toward the end of the book after Gatsby dies (spoilers) and Carraway is trying to talk another character into going to the funeral. However, the character doesn't want to go. "Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead," he says, "After that my own rule is to let everything alone." That really struck me for some reason. I think it was because there is a broader application to life within that line.
Personally, I've been noticing that, in a lot of ways, I have been avoiding life. Either out of fear or the possibility of failure or whatever, I have been hiding in my hobbit hole while the world pounds away at my door, its thundering voice unheeded, and its adventurous stories ignored. When I read that line, it reminded me in a strange way, that I am alive. Things must be done now if they are going to be done at all just as friendship must be offered while friends are living, not after they are dead.
Before this goes where it seems to be going: into the vague, unrealistic clouds of dreams and Hollywood, let me just say that this is not another imperative to plea to go out and live life no matter what the cost. I am not F. Scott Fitzgerald and I am not being advocated by Coke. This is simply, in a small way, a reminder that we are being invited, with each breath and new dawn, to live intentionally and be who we are going to be.
This week I've thrown open a few windows in my hobbit hole and am going to try to throw open a few more. Maybe its time to listen to the thundering voice, a few stories, and take another step into a world that has held me captive for so long.
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