I have waited over 37 years to present this essay to the world. I wrote it when I was a very young boy just out of high school. It was amazing how it all came to me. It came to me in inspired spurts of 15 to 20 minutes at a time over a 4 day period. I hope that you enjoy it and appreciate its simple but profound message.
How many of us are letting life whiz by? How many of us are letting irretrievable time pass us, as we continue to look over the horizon, waiting to live for that magical wonderland which is to come? How many years will be wasted before we are enlightened and realize that our waiting-to-live is such a tragic farce?
An explosive illustration of the above can be seen in this quote by Stephan Leacock: “How strange it is, our little procession of life! The child says, ‘When I am a big boy.’ But what is that? The big boy says, ‘When I grow up.” And then, grown up, he says, ‘When I get married.’ But to be married, what is that after all? The thought changes to ‘When I’m able to retire.’ And then, when retirement comes, he looks back over the landscape traversed; a cold wind seems to sweep over it; somehow he has missed it all, and it is gone. life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.”
Life must be captured in its movement. Life lies in its progression, not after the fulfillment of goals, because once all goals are fulfilled there is no more life.
Implicit within this concept of life is its central purpose: enjoyment. Every activity a human being engages in is goal-oriented consciously or unconsciously. Therefore, everything one does should be either potentially or immediately directed to enjoyment.
Life is like a trip on a train. We either look out the window and enjoy the colors, sights and panorama of the landscape as we pass them by,or we sleep throughout the entire ride, only to awaken at the end of our road. Is it that the trip is as important as the reaching of the destination.
Life is like an exquisite and sumptuously prepared banquet placed before us. The individual who races through the appetizers and entre, to be able to quickly get to and finish with the dessert, has overlooked that the pleasure of the banquet, and life is in the savoring of it, bite by bite, each and every part of it. We cannot listen to a completed piece of music – all at once; we can only enjoy it as it moves through us – note by note. Fulfillment should not be exalted to the near exclusion of the progression. Progression and fulfillment should be considered as one on an ever intensifying continuum, that is, fulfillment is progression at its highest and most glorious stage.
We should try to approach life as a never-ending progression of enjoyment. We should think more of the now movement. We should begin to live more within the now movement. Since the progression or movement toward a goal is usually longer than the experience of its fulfillment, then one should be aware of and try to experience the joy of the progression as well as the fulfillment.
An important concept to the understanding of enjoying the progression of life lies within the concept of stimulus variation, or simply “experience”. In 1954, a group of scientists, by the names of Benton, Heron and Scott, did an experiment at McGill University where college students were paid $20.00 a day (a lot of money in 1954) to do absolutely nothing.
For 24 hours a day, they laid on comfortable beds in a room kept at an even temperature. Their eyes, ears and hands were shielded to minimize stimulus variation. Whereas some individuals chronically complaining of the drudgery of having to get up and go to work every morning would consider this situation a Utopian means of making a living. The fact was that under the conditions of the experiment, few subjects could endure more than 2 or 3 days! the craving for stimulus variation was overwhelming!
Stimulus variation is anything that can be experienced. It could be eating an ice cream cone, being depressed through a love lost, attending a church revival or meditating on life. Stimulus variation means experience. Experience is the synonym for life, for living implies experiencing. Life should be a continuum of achieving higher and higher levels of experience. Variety is indeed the spice of life, and stimulus variation is necessary for the emotional satisfaction and happiness of the human organism. Inertia is anathema. One is happiest when he is vitally absorbed in something which interests him. Even pain can deepen and mature, sometimes opening consciousness to a more profound understanding of life.
I often thought that a world completely without any problems or needs would be utopia, but now I wonder. If there are no problems or needs, there can be no goals. If there are no goals, there is no life, activity or stimulus variation toward its fulfillment. If there is no stimulus variation, as was noted above, there will be no emotional satisfaction, therefore no enjoyment, therefore no happiness. Is then suffering, pain and problems a reflection of the infinite intelligence and benevolence of the universe?
Since absorption and activity are so vital to the emotional well-being of the individual, we are naturally led into what forms the core of all our activity: our daily work. Alas, far too many people find their daily “work” an unenjoyable and unpleasant experience. As I once read: “Nothing is really work, unless you would rather be doing something else.”
Too many jobs are ill-chosen on the basis of the salary alone. Sorry is the man or woman who lives only from payday to payday at a job which he or she despises. The majority of our lives are spent on the jobs or in the careers we have chosen. Can we really afford such a waste? For all we know the life we have may end tomorrow.
I find that sadly too many of us live sporadically and in pieces by finding life only when we “go out and have a ball” instead of also living, enjoying and experiencing life – right now.
A happy gardener who enjoys the jokes, laughter and conversation of his co-workers, the beauty of the landscape and has the appreciation in his heart of being able to express his joy through his work is much more “successful” in life than the pressured executive who has gone for the third time for the treatment of his stress-induced ulcers.
So let us stop putting off the living and loving of life, for living and loving and enjoying life can only be in the present moment. Let us capture it. Let us awake from our stupor. Let us at last silence the echoing laughter of the tyrant Time, who devours our lives as endlessly wait for him to bring us into an impossible experience of the receding future.
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