On most days, I have a "get through it" mentality. I count off the task of my day in hours. Despite my future-oriented nature, I'm paradoxically amazed by how quickly time passes. I have a concern for "getting through" the very hours I should recognize as my life.
Especially on the days I teach, the clock is simply a wheel of 50 minute increments. I can create and attend to a to-do list only when I'm not in class. For some reason, my very schedule seems to prevent me from accomplishing a lot of work. I aim to just "get through" one thing so that I can (with keen hopes) "get through" another, all in the name of productivity and virtue.
Thank you, my Protestant past.
For the past few years, I have not been consistently "living." I have been "getting through." I survive pretty damn well, but I do not think I always come close to what many would call living. I think survival and perseverance seem to suggest an underlying dread. Living should suggest enjoyment, clarity, diligence or focus, and present-mindedness.
I would like to live, even if that means I don't perform my best. I would like to live, even if that means someone thinks me irresponsible or too emotional or even unprofessional. I would like to live because, at the end of it all, I don't want be left with one thought: "Well, at least I got through it."
To be tuned to the present means that we must release some of our desperate need for survival. For those of us who must bear grief, or desires, or heavy workloads, or intense addictions, or extreme loves.....we cling to survival as "what we do."
We aren't called to survive or "get through" but to live.
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