We can all get into the trap of feeling swamped by real and imagined problems, vs. taking what is evident and solving the issue at hand.
The Buddhist perspective would be to surrender to what is in front of you, do what you can, and then get on with your life. And to do that well–one has to possess a healthy dose of acceptance.
Below is short excerpt on topic from Golke’s recent blog.
The problem with problems is that you can solve only one at a time. Once you go into the realm of real-time and energy, there’s only so much you can spend on any given issue before you run out of steam, another becomes more important, or it escalates to the point of rendering the solution moot.
Below is what Maria Popova (of The Marginalian fame) posted on her Unselfing Social webpage:
“Somewhere along the way, in the century of the self, we forgot each other. We forgot this vast and wonder-filled universe, of which we are each but a tiny and transient wonder.
Oliver Burkeman addresses the monkey that rides on our shoulder whispering “You didn’t get enough done today – certainly not as much as we should have, could have.”
I think a bit too often, if I’m being honest, about the closing scene of episode two of Aaron Sorkin’s TV-show-about-a-TV-show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which got ignominiously cancelled after a single season. (You can watch the scene in question here.)
Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford play executive producers called in to rescue and relaunch a weekly live sketch show, a thinly disguised version of Saturday Night Live, and the episode follows their high-stress efforts to pull it together in a week. The anxiety builds as a huge digital clock on the control room wall counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds to the moment they’re due on air. The world – well, the media world – is watching. The stakes are high. Last-minute crises and conflicts threaten to derail the whole thing.
But they manage it: the show goes live, the opening number ends, the studio audience goes wild, and the camera cuts to Perry, watching from the back. For the first time, his expression isn’t tense, but relaxed. He’s satisfied, proud, absorbed in the spectacle. Against the odds, things are OK.
…For about one second. Then a troubling thought strikes him, the tension returns to his face, and the camera follows his gaze to the countdown clock on the wall. It now shows six days, 23 hours, 57 minutes and 53 seconds: the time they’ve got left in which to do it all over again next week.
I doubt I’m alone in feeling as if I know exactly what Perry’s character is going through here. I’ve written before about the sense many of us have that we begin each morning in a state of “productivity debt”, which we must struggle to pay off over the course of the day, if we’re to feel by the evening like we’ve earned our spot on the planet. (“Few things feel more basic to my experience of adulthood,” I wrote, “than this vague sense that I’m falling behind, and need to claw my way back up to some minimum standard of output.”)
Why it’s important to reevaluate the stories we tell ourselves
There is a series on Showtime called The Affair. The aspect of the show I liked best was that it was told from multiple perspectives. In every episode, each character shared their account of a conversation. Within an episode we would get all of these different versions of the same event, and it was so interesting. There are so many different ways to experience something. More than one truth can exist.
We may have a different perception of ourselves and the way we come across than the people around us. Someone may find themselves in disbelief that someone thought they were rude when in reality that is a perception that is commonly held by the people around them.
There is a series on Showtime called The Affair. The aspect of the show I liked best was that it was told from multiple perspectives. In every episode, each character shared their account of a conversation. Within an episode we would get all of these different versions of the same event, and it was so interesting. There are so many different ways to experience something. More than one truth can exist.
We may have a different perception of ourselves and the way we come across than the people around us. Someone may find themselves in disbelief that someone thought they were rude when in reality that is a perception that is commonly held by the people around them.
You may have seen the old Mickey Mouse movie in which he is working at a conveyor belt in a factory. More and more widgets come at him that he has to handle, and he gets increasingly frazzled as he struggles to keep up.
Do you ever feel the same way? Think about all the dishes, emails, meetings, reports, drives, calls returned, laundry folded, children tucked into bed, friends comforted, errands run, etc. etc. Most of a person’s tasks, even all of them, could be individually rewarding and done for a good purpose, but taken as a whole they’re often too much. It’s certainly gotten this way for me.
Doing crowds out being, the urgent crowds out the important, and you go to bed after working hard all day feeling frustrated and maybe self-critical that you didn’t get more done. (…) At the heart of it all there’s an unfreedom: you can feel chained to obligatory tasks.
What to do?
Take on Fewer Tasks Of course, it’s good to make an effort, to hold up your end of the log. You honor your previous commitments. And sometimes new things come your way – some wonderful, some not – that do require a lot of work. (,,,)
Your entire life, death is with you. You know it’s coming. It knows it’s coming. It’s just a matter of when.
Death is your neighbor, and one day, he’ll come over. The funny thing is when he does, you’ll be the least affected.
“Interesting expression, ‘taking your own life,’” Sherlock Holmes once remarked. “Taking it from who? Once it’s over, it’s not you who’ll miss it. Your own death is something that happens to everybody else.”
We tend to think death is the worst thing that can happen to us, but actually, it is the worst thing that can happen to the people we love. Our death, that is.
When we live in fear of death, we often try to take ridiculous precautions, like working hard to build “a legacy,” whatever that means, or amassing a fortune we’ll never get to spend. Ironically, we might neglect the very people who’ll bear the brunt of our departure in the process.
