+ ” . . . . . . I wish we could hit the brakes, but we live in a brakeless era.” – Paul Ford on the AI revolution
I remember years ago there was a movie where Adam Sandler had a remote control that he could press “fast forward” on the parts of his life which were difficult and challenging. It seemed like a great premise/invention, but the whole point of the movie was about just how much poignancy you would miss in your life, if you just tried to fast forward through it all. The point of the movie was to remind us that all parts of life are to be experienced and savored, even the hard parts. Now considering this opposite side of the coin, I see Paul Ford’s point of wishing we could press “STOP” or at least “PAUSE” in what feels like a constant, frenetic jangle of nerves and rapid advancements in these modern times. But we don’t have magical remote controls to control the times of our lives. We don’t have mystical magical wands to control the forces outside of us. We only have Presence. I read a poem the other day by Kevin Anderson that starts with the line, “I choose to live life heavily meditated.” I think that’s a great choice. We’ve all already pressed the Start/Play button on the days which we were born. We don’t have any other buttons to press, so now we must just experience and engage with what we started and hopefully in such a way that if we did actually have RECORD/REWIND buttons, we would be proud of the person we see doing and trying their best, even in the hard times that they wish they could have just fast-forward through, and even in the fleeting times when they were just begging for a pause.
+ “Collecting gathers. Curating edits.” – Jillian Bremer
I’ve always loved collecting. This is evident by the various piles of my favorite things, all around my home (particularly shoes). It strikes me though, that I have reached a stage in my life where curating has never felt more necessary, cleansing and freeing. When we are younger, we are like busy, twitchy little squirrels, running around, gathering, gathering, gathering, frantically trying to gather more and more and more. Sometimes we are so busy gathering that, much like squirrels, we forget what and where and how much that we already have amassed. Then, what sometimes feels like a sudden dawning, we reach this middle age and beyond stage of life, and we take a look at our “stockpiles” – not just of our things and belongings, but our stockpiles and collections of experiences and relationships and knowledge and wisdom and job titles and achievements and obligations and beliefs, etc., and we realize that we don’t need to keep gathering so much. What would be more beneficial for us, is to start whittling down a lot of our piles and our collections, to what is actually personally meaningful and lasting and worthwhile of our space (including our mindspace).
” ‘Finding yourself’ is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you”. ” – Emily McDowell
At our ages, we have already gathered quite a bit of our story, and we will undoubtedly collect more stories along the way (our closing chapters are hopefully long yet to be written), but we are also at the major editing stage of life. We are curating our vast collections down to what we really need to sustain ourselves and to fully appreciate those aspects of life that make it so individually satisfying to our truest, core selves. When we curate, we stop overwhelm. When we curate, we learn what we truly appreciate. When we curate, we understand what deeply moves us the most. When we curate, we excavate down to the core of who we really are “before the world got its hands on us.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.