“When everything’s made to be broken”
“I just want you to know who I am.”
The line above is as this short article’s title would suggest from a song called “Iris“. One of my favorite lines from the song is actually in the second verse, and it’s sort of the lesson of it all here in this short article from me. It goes something like, “And all I can taste is this moment, And all I can breathe is your life, And sooner or later it’s over, I just don’t wanna miss you tonight.”
The philosophy here is actually quite ancient. All we truly have is “this moment”. Everything is made to be broken. There is no proof of the past. Our civilization has only been here a short time in the span of the Earth’s life. Many scientists believe and many ancient texts back-up the fact that advanced civilizations lived here long before we did. There’s no evidence of them because hundreds of thousands of years would have passed and even our own great skyscrapers and bridges would have long eroded away by now in that span of earthly time.
The future,,,, well that’s unwritten. While the road of destiny is laid with all its streets and cut-offs and dead-ends. We don’t know which roads we’re going to turn down, or have to turn down yet. So you can plan for the future, it’s certainly wise to do that. But you can’t live for the future or the past. All we have as “Iris” teaches us IS this moment. And if we don’t make the most of it, it’s gone…
Some of you spend far too much time and energy worried about what someone did to you, and far too little time and energy figuring out how not to let that happen again! We’re here to learn, not suffer. The lessons are usually quite obvious in fact. Point being, never put your life in “park” for anyone or anything. Even when shit happens, just roll with it. It’s all part of the story, the movie, the song, that is YOUR life, and the moments that make it up.
The philosophical approach is one of every moment, every second matters. The time it took you to read this short article is in fact time you will never get back. People don’t put too much stock in time. Which is stupid because our lives are very short. We really don’t live very long. By contrast people put a lot of emphasis on money. They worry when they lose it, and some even take their own lives over it when they do. I find this baffling. Me… I don’t give a fuck about money. I can always make more, there’s a whole sea of it out there. No I get worried when I lose a second of my life to nonsense, or a fuckwit who wants to waste my time. Because that second is worth far more than all the gold in the world. Because I can’t get that back. There isn’t a whole sea of time out there. In fact there’s no such thing as time. Time is simply our human perception of the cycles of our immediate surroundings. i.e. the Earth around the Sun, and the spin of the Earth etc.
Happiness lives in perspective, not in circumstance. We gain perspective by learning our lessons. When you learn what really matters to you, you usually find that very little beyond “the moment”, this moment,,, actually does. Just like in the song “Iris”, life is a series of moments. Nobody would just walk around and hand out piles of money to strangers on the street. No we hold that money dear and close. Yet sadly and rather ironically being that the moments of your life are worth far more than money, most people hand out their time like they’ve got endless amounts of it.
There’s a lot of magic in life that most people miss. They spend even special moments worried & dwelling on prior bad moments, or potential future bad moments.
I will say, there IS magic in missing all that magic. lol .. The problem is, the magic in the missed magic is retrospective in nature, and comes with regrets at the end of our very short road of time.
On that magic in the missed magic topic… One of my favorite quotes along those lines is by F. Scott Fitzgerald from “The Ice Palace”. I’ll end with it below (paraphrased of course).
“The things that make you fail I’ll always love,
The living in the past, the lazy days and nights,
And all your carelessness and generosity.”
The lesson.…. Learn to suffer fools lightly. Because every moment matters. i.e. Don’t let the bastards get you down.. EVER!
–Cheers