Published in Mental Health News
While we sleep through the Busyness of life – an illness has manifested itself.
“I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then, Dad.”
“I’d love to Dad, if I can find the time.”
Harry Chapin, The Cat’s in the Cradle. Excerpt
We, including this author, are caught up in doing instead of experiencing. We believe our words and actions will result in a better world for our children while the chores at hand are just taking us away from them. Progress becomes an illusion with every financial statement, monthly and quarterly report. Who will see our spreadsheets and audits, our reports when we happen upon new paths in life, where we hopefully face a healthy retirement or working less hours and doing something more enjoyable, constructive – if we are lucky? Can we look back at all our doings and say our lives had a meaning even if one is fortunate enough to have a healthy family? Were we able to stop and reflect – mindful of the beauty of life itself? Can the accomplishments and sacrifices we make today satisfy us a decade from now? Can we build a permanence of satisfaction in a temporal world that will carry us unto the spiritual?
Success is fine. Daily obligations of data are needed for companies, industries to exist, survive and grow. As a former accountant, much of my work really urgently, mattered, but then that progress is forgotten as soon as the next report is needed. We sleep when we do not remember the cost, often hidden in this new age where one builds items of less permanence than previous generations. We must remember the cost of taking that job, for the necessity money and not for the pleasure. It is rare and difficult to juggle between this necessity of economics, the needs of the heart and the faithful obligations for the soul. There is a juggling act that we were never trained for, prepared for. By consistently choosing the pleasures of the now with its material rewards instead of the ‘Mindfulness of the Now’ in the immediate present creates heartaches, damages the family and weakens the soul. We may end up sleep walking through a life in a nation of abundancy. ( An acronym for busy: Buried Under Satan’s Yoke.)
While we sleep, in this modern age, focusing on the material, we are losing pieces of our soul.
We now have “the things our grandparents thought only rich had people. Yet instead of rejoicing, we’ve found the glass half empty. Our jobs take too much out of us and don’t pay enough.” A Short Guide to a Happy Life. Anna Quindlen.
We are sleeping, ignorant, as the world’s beauty slowly fades with our sins of greed for abundance, of having for the sake of having and neglecting both nature and our neighbor. The truths of our journey we ignore as we collect the material. I wish I could be one, able to plead ‘not guilty’ when it comes to the desire of the material, the collection of stuff that (except for a few heirlooms) will slowly be forgotten, deteriorate, perish is a world of time.
Can an entire culture sleep? Is there such a prospect that a society having too much wealth or the desire of abundance weaken the individual, the family structure and subdue, extinguish the culture? (Think of World War II and the ‘minor’ wars that plague human history.) Can a society and the individual lose the value of the Now and Mindfulness? Have we forgotten how small the individual is, how short life is and how great the I, the self, is in the eyes of oud God? We should learn to enjoy life, or re-learn this enjoyment once held in the years of our childhoods.
While we sleep, there will be that instant that changes everything.
There will be moments in all our lives that in an instant, I guarantee, will change us, those around us and it may not be for the better. Are we prepared? The human mind, body, psyche and soul are not well prepared at the initial onset, but the experiences of living life fully determines how the individual rebounds to the shock of sudden change. Those who slept with eyes only on the material prize may suffer the deepest of the individual fears. Those who know how to live in the fully, mindfully in the temporal, in ‘The Power of the Now’, will adjust to events leading to the permanence of the spiritual. I am not one of them, but maybe one day…
While we sleep, enjoying our materiality, we are separated from the spiritual, each other and other ideas.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.” Mark Twain.
We sleep when again we do not see beyond the material, then communication is becoming less personal. A side effect of our modern culture where information travels faster than ever before in human history. Every person we meet, every person that crosses our path can be an opportunity to touch the soul of another. A soul made from the same star dust, the same building blocks of all creation. When strangers remain strangers and simple encounters with others are minimalized, are we losing one of God’s gifts – each other – the value of another, a soul on the same journey?
We sleep stubbornly staying with thoughts and actions we consider safe, sometimes without reflection of the tenets of our faith and the love we should have. (I see someone parking their car in a ticket zone and I watch from my window and do nothing – pondering if I should interfere.) We have one chance in this time and space to reflect, assist, and aid so many others. We have the chance to see things, to think ‘outside the box’. Globally, nationally and within our own families we have various forms of wealth that go unnoticed and unappreciated.
We sleep and loose opportunities. The worse phrase in the English language is “should have”. “I should have played it safe and not moved.” “I should have taken the other job.” It makes, creates inside us the great frailty of doubt and fear of failing. Our culture is very unforgiving on those who do not succeed. There is no reward for trying the difficult. There is only the labeling of that individual as a failure and loser, which may last a lifetime. Success should be rewarded. The courage to go forward should be applauded.
While we were sleeping, we pondered too much, ignored the needy, the ill, and the chance to make a difference in someone’s life and thereby change the world, their world. We’ve ignore the Old and New Testaments and the philosophy of many cultures.
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Glenn Slaby Blog