Happy reading,
We so often hear the following question:
How can one make progress despite all the daily difficulties?
It’s as if we were asking whether it’s possible to get to the second floor despite the stairs. When in fact it’s thanks to the staircase that we can get to the second floor.
I know you're looking for a way out, but in life, there's no elevator! You climb step by step with your own feet, and no technology can replace us. There are no shortcuts. You don't skip steps. You can't go faster than the music—your own music.
To live is to consciously pass through every moment, to fill each small event that presents itself with diligence, with great care, even with respect, so that nothing is lost.
As one would taste a Beaujolais nouveau, taking care not to lose a single drop. Savoring every moment, tasting every thing, feeling every scent, enjoying the presence of each person, experiencing every fear, feeling the slightest pain, appreciating every syllable of the song, every drop of that immense fountain of joy and sorrow that is the tree of life.
Everything helps us progress, as long as we live fully and accept it. Everything serves our progress. There are no roles or privileged occupations. Only the intensity of loving tenderness fills life with meaning and elevates us. (Go ask the Olympic star what gives it that relentless and tenacious dedication to each day of its long and difficult training!)
The boat cannot pass through the lock until the required water level is reached. It is the intensity of love that raises the water and allows the boat to access the next chamber. It is the intense love of light that causes the tender sprout to gradually pierce through the asphalt.
This notion is devoid of romance. It is not romantic to get up at six in the morning to go to work when you have the flu; it is not romantic to empty the septic tanks when it is minus 25; and certainly not to take the subway during rush hour, to wait in line for a bus that never comes, to break down, to get a flat tire, to lose sleep over a crying baby, to see the household laid low with fever, to receive the bills, to file your taxes, to do the shopping, to wash your dishes, your laundry, or your floor. But life is not romantic. Romance is “wishful thinking”; it is dreaming of what does not exist.
The lives portrayed in movies and TV series give us the impression that life should be more interesting, that we must have missed something somewhere, that there must be something we haven’t done right, which is why our lives are so dull. Because of this, we dream of a romantic life where everything would be pleasant, kind, and enjoyable. And we keep searching until we find that famous thing that would miraculously turn our life from black and white into color.
But it’s me who is squashing my life. It’s me who doesn’t savor the moments, so much so that there are only voids in my life, with a few fleeting and furious compensations at the tavern, the party, or the disco.
It is I who am waiting for my life to be valued by something. Something that would come like a fairy or a ringmaster to transform, with a wave of a wand, all this boredom into an exhilarating adventure, so that I might finally live a life that is a continuous sequence of intense moments. Only I can transform my life. It is up to me to accept the moments I am living. By refusing them, I am the one who strips them of all value. By accepting them, I fill them with myself, with my worth, with my reality. I am living a unique adventure in the world, a mixture of joys and sorrows that I alone know. I inhabit my life. I am not elsewhere, absent, like someone walking beside their bicycle.
Accepting the everyday is the hardest thing for everyone. We don’t want to live our life; we want to live a different one, the one we dreamed of or the one of others (the part that appeals to us, of course, not their daily lives, which we manage to forget or deny).
But we only make progress by filling these small, uneventful moments with attentive presence.
When we accept living each of our moments, without waiting for anything else, we build a fulfillment that nothing can attack. It is then that in our life, nothing is lost; rather, everything is created.
Marylena