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Living in the real world?
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 10:07PM What is the use of planning to be able to eat next week unless I can really enjoy the meals when they come ? If I am so busy planning how to eat next week that I cannot fully enjoy what I am eating now, I will be in the same predicament when next week's meals become "now."
If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.
-- The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts.
Reader Comments (4)
Food, and enjoyment of food, the obsession of the rich so called Western Civilisations.
Planning to be *able* to eat next week is about survival not enjoyment. What people are forgetting is eating is not a pleasure thing it is a survival thing. At least if you use the word *able*. If the post had said, planning what I would enjoy next week, that would be a different matter.
This is one of the reasons I'm choosing to practice not knowing where I'm going to sleep next week. In fact, I do now know (at least I think I do) where I'm going to be until next Wednesday, but I also trust that there will be times in the next few months when I don't have things sorted that far ahead and that that will be perfectly alright - my well-being here and now did not materially shift when I arranged with my friend to go and stay on Monday and Tuesday night.
I was grateful this morning for waking up in the bed I woke up in. It just happened to be the one labelled "mine" in "my flat" but tonight "my bed" will be in pieces in a storage unit and I'll be resting my head somewhere in Wood Green. And that's as much as I *really* need to know.
Go for it!
love it! love it! love it!