What direction are you going in, how do you plan to get there, are you there yet, do you need to change directions to get there, do you even want to be there, what? we were there all along?? These are the questions that come to us as we sojourn here- in whatever we pursue. The amount we want to give to individuals, to organizations, to ourselves, our families all changes with the transient nature of time. Even in the midst of pouring everything into one thing I will turn and think to myself, "is this where I am supposed to be, am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing?" At which point I think, "well of course it is, otherwise I would be somewhere else doing something else."
What is really amazing to me is when I look around at how others choose to distribute their resource of time. If you think about it, time is more precious than any resource we have, and least known. We all know that we want X dollars for a new ____, but none of us know if we will wake up tomorrow to spend it or not. We cannot buy more time, and we cannot sell it. It is the great equalizer, it does not discriminate, does not care if you have a really good reason or not. When time is up, the game is over.
For this reason, those people that use it in a way that I deem excellent, have great worth in my eyes. Today I am reminded of a beautiful woman that spent her life being only ordinary and yet exceptional. Her job was one in a million, teaching. Her love was typical, children. Her passion was beautiful and her style impeccable. These things did not make her excellent. Her excellence came from her resource allocation. She did not know that she only had 47 years to make her mark, and yet she was driven with a desire to change the injustice that she saw and to love her daughters. In a determined state, she chipped away, student by student, barrier by barrier at the lives of illiteracy and poverty that she taught. There was time to celebrate, always, and there was time to relax. But her focus remained her focus- regardless.
Sometimes, when you are very close, you do not even realize how truly amazing the person you are near is. Not long after her time was finished here on earth, I came across a young girl at a drive-in-restaurant. The girl recognized me because of my voice, it was the same voice that had encouraged her, driven her and motivated her to reach for goals that were bigger than the place she lived in. She asked if I was her dear teacher's daughter and I told her that I was. She declared with tears in her eyes that she never would have been able to be anything, or do anything if it was not for the encouragement of her fourth grade teacher, my mother.
Resource allocation well spent.
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2 comments:
You were in my thoughts today, Carrie.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard:
Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey. It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived.
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From the movie Waking Life:
The reason I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity is that I think it has something very important to offer us for the new century. I'm afraid we're losing the real virtues of living life passionately, a sense of taking responsibility for who you are. The ability to make something of yourself and feeling good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it's a philosophy of despair but I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre once interviewed said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. But one thing that comes out from reading these guys, is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance, a feeling on top of it, it's like your life is yours to create. I've read the post modernists with some interest, even admiration, but when I read them I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more you talk about a person as a social construction or as confluence of forces or as fragmented or marginalized, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses, and when Sartre talks about responsibility he's not talking about something abstract. He's not talking about the kind of self or soul the theologians would argue about. It's something very concrete, it's you and me talking, making decisions, doing things and taking the consequences. It might be true that there's six billion people in the world and counting, nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference first of all in material terms, it makes a difference to other people and sets an example. In short I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are.
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I have always felt this sense of urgency in my life, like I'm in a race against time. It has pushed me to the limits of an untenable dichotomy; My superhuman achivements are offset by my all - too - human failures. The best parts of my nature contrast my weaknesses. There is so much I want to do, and I feel a sense of duty and obligation to my loved ones and the world at large, but overcoming my nature is the hardest thing to do, and every day is like a pendulum, Not forward or back, more like a spiral.
I have never been happier than this moment in my life, nonetheless the urgency is still there. I guess I'm waiting for the day when I make the difference in the world that I always wanted to, but I all to often forget that I'm doing that every day.
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