The idea of being organised and being proactive is that one knows not only of what to do and not what to do but also how to be engaged in the world. It is about an authentic way of being for ever rather than being instinctive and or reactive to every situation.
One who lives on a day to day /moment to moment are always caught up in non-certainties. Choice therefore is accidental. One moves about and would readily adopt the reactionary approach where one follows a way set by others: merely having the illusion that one has a choice. A veritable choice is where the subject is not controlled by events/verbosities or opinions or following any other. Life is that choice where one views the goal ahead not through some other but of one’s own reflection.
The test is to always stop, pause and reflect. The key questions being what are the advantages of making or making a particular choice. How if my choice may or not cause distress possibly to the choice or those about me? That the test which is a difficult as often in the thick of things one of course ‘knows’ that one is making a correct choice.
Many years ago as part of my learning; I came across a certain Shivapuri Baba who commented to Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan that he taught three disciplines physical, mental and spiritual. The non- balanced life causes distress if we just attempt to live haphazardly. Take the affluent professional: one may be a hard worker but not quite a smart one as there may be over indulgence of say lack of sleep which in turns affects other aspects of one’s life.
Similarly our comrade may also after having a resounding horrid time through hard enterprise then goes on a crusade of ‘enjoyment’ or pleasure seeking involving leaving aside all the hard work and or when s/he is off duty then does the exact opposite of work to the point of over exposing of the body in over indulgence.
Or take the guy who feels the way to be is precisely in overindulgence. It is the ways of the world where the concern is one of seeking happiness albeit momentary even at the cost of failing to apprehend the dialectics. By the latter phrase, I mean a lack concern in appreciating how the bodily- self functions.
The excuse for the pleasure seekers is a truncated goal which sometimes lead to despair measures at readjustment and the abuse of the body finally come to light only when an emergency forces one to awake. In some instances, it may be too late.
The rationale behind a frantic style of living is that one fails to adopt and appreciate life in its grandeur not because one does not do but simply because there is no time in the modern world where seekers are after those instant grabbling of happiness/pleasures whether it be through indulgence in the multi forms of readily available consumables which initially one yearns for … then with time over indulgence creeps in.
The Buddha has warned against craving and yet the projects of the pleasure hunters are precisely that of seeking a part without the latter and again to use a Buddhist term; dukkha kicks in where it becomes all unavoidable. Or you may not have pleasure without suffering. It is all part of the same process that suffering will always be there.
A lack of appreciation alludes to the fact that one may avoid the latter in our hapless search for a way out of the maze through frantic type existence, hence the call is to nurture that basic self in unison. Or it is a question of seeing that there is an interdependence between all three aspects of the self: bodily, mental or spiritual. Covey pointed out that one needs to take note of such a rational balance of physical/mental /spiritual in the first instance or making sense of each aspect of these categories or there will be a lack where one part of the equation if overriding the other makes one crumbles and or lead astray.
To be sure there have been lots of effort whilst educating the child in aspects of the known about the physical, mental and other moral of one’s being.
To some extent there have been efforts made in the cultural field which teachers others at reaching out against a blatant bigoted view of life. Part of the problem lies in the fact one fails to saw the wood again to borrow a Coveyan term!
Creating a triple balance in one’s life is not something that the blogger may pronounce as a recipe which may yield instant results. It is up to the reader to put the brakes on with one’s frantic lifestyle and restore or recuperate the self through self-reflection and taking creative actions rather than be misled in the waves of opinions or exposures which may drown one. Is there a way where one may actually rather verbally put an end to a futile form of being?
Is there a way where one may not fall prey to the norms of the superficial of the known where the danger is always there at being turned into an object in spite of our expertise at some-thing where one lacks appreciating other or all-thing? Can one shrug the malady of living a partial way and adopt a fuller more appreciative way of being? Is such a way viable? Or should one continue with the form of truncation where all that one sees is merely a divided aspect of one’s being? In this division lies inherent problems of a rupture style of existence where one fails to make sense whilst continuing to believe that it is after all how one is taught through the school system and later on through more expertise work training.
Life apprehension takes on a different dimension that of uniting rather than living a part of one’s being. It is indeed seeking that firm balance. How does one do it? Over to you the reader!