Category: Feeling Fulfilled

A quote I uploaded yesterday that I’ve been thinking about a lot:

“Because work has temporal structure, we unconsciously associate leisure with temporal disorganization. And over this deadening rhythm is played, again and again, the same psychological bolero: Monday, the Day of Wrath; Tuesday and Wednesday, the grind; weary Thursday, across whose fallowness Friday, a prostitute-goddess of inexplicably renewable freshness, beckons with a promise of unspecified fulfillment. This promise is based on the lie that human nature, unfulfilled by work, can be fulfilled by leisure. Of course the promise is never kept; we spend Saturday and Sunday consecrating the week’s successes and failures to oblivion, in deepening dread of the Monday to come.”

Robert Grudin, Time And The Art Of Living

I hadn’t really thought about it like this before, but I do feel this strange urge to be anti-temporal-structure when off work.

I still usually get done main priorities (i.e. workout, chores, errands, etc)—but definitely in a more disorderly way. I usually sleep in later… Am on my phone longer… Give into cravings more…

And while it’s true that it’s precisely this that gives leisure time at least some of its pleasure, I oftentimes feel like I finish those same days feeling less good about the day overall… Like it was mostly wasted…

And while, yes, we need this temporal disorganization space as a sort of Yin to the Yang of work, I also think we need to be more mindful than ever of what we’re choosing to do during “disorganized time…” Are we passive-entertainment-binging or casually reading? Are we TikTok-ing or hobbying? Are we actively living or screen vegetating?

Something to think about…

The benefit to having your life “flash before your eyes” is that you get it back… after those terrifying moments of feeling like it was lost.

…And the gratitude that comes with it is unmatched.

I had my life flash before my eyes recently and unmatched gratitude was slapped into my perspective in a way that’s hard to achieve through gratitude journaling.

And what came from it wasn’t just a few moments of contentment, but an overall slower pace… a more undivided attention throughout the day… more carefully placed actions and words with each interaction…

I hope you don’t experience a terrifying moment. But, I do hope you’re able to flash your life before your eyes and really elicit the power of the unmatched gratitude that accompanies it.

It really is unbelievable that we’re here…

How nice to walk into a quaint, quiet café and sit with two or three other customers… with one owner of the café serving you and the other owner sitting with a customer in a booth having a relaxed conversation.

No sense of urgency. No there-just-to-get-a-paycheck. No resentment in having to serve or do the work. No tapping feet or staring at the clock. No doing the bare minimum or avoiding ways things could be made better.

…Just a couple regular folks, making an honest living, by providing goods and a service that’s worth more than the money it costs, while doing it happily, in the smallest of corners in the world…

…Precisely where a few people could really use it and, as far as I could tell, really appreciate it.

After sharing some thoughts about having an attitude of gratitude at the end of a martial arts class I was teaching, a student came up to me and asked, “How do we balance being grateful for what we have with being goal-oriented, driven, and ambitious?”

My answer is by using gratitude as fuel.

When we start from a place of gratitude, we fill ourselves up with a positive type energy. That energy, by and by, puts us in a better state. And when we’re in a better state, we perform better. And the byproduct, of course, are better results.

When we start from a place of entitlement, however, we fill ourselves up with a negative type energy. We feel discontent—like we don’t have enough and, by and by, aren’t enough as people… maybe even feel envy, jealousy, and anger at the people who have what we don’t. This puts us in a worse state, which leads us to perform worse (or in a dirty way), and the byproduct is hamster wheel living—always running in circles getting one thing, moving our desire to something else until we get that thing, and repeating forever onward.

See—gratitude allows us to reconnect with the present; scarcity keeps us focused elsewhere—rarely in the present.

Gratitude keeps us focused on the means. Scarcity keeps us obsessing over ends.

Gratitude fills us up—with energy. Entitlement fills us up—with toxicity.

Don’t confuse gratitude for weakness or with an unambitious-ness. Gratitude is a rocket fuel that’ll launch us further forward than the opposite ever will.

At my grandmother’s 90th birthday party this past weekend, a family member made a comment to her that she was sorry she forgot the lighter.

…And my grandmother looked around the room—at the 23+ family members, 5 of whom were under the age of 10, 7 of whom were printed onto poster board and glued to a stick (because they weren’t able to make it from out of town), the array of eaten-clean plates and sipped-dry glasses, the custom decorated cupcakes, the private room in the favorite restaurant with the incredible waitress—and said, “but look at all that you remembered…!”