I am indebted to Dr Robert Lee "Bob" Culver and to
Laurel Scheaf
who inspired this conversation.
Hindsight, as Billy Wilder noted, is always 20/20 vision.
I don't regret not knowing what I know now, sooner. "If I only knew
then what I know now" isn't an enduring refrain for me. Spoken more
rigorously,
I don't regret not knowing the way I know now, sooner. Yet
there are things with which I struggled earlier in life, with which I
no longer struggle. Not that I won those struggles (in
retrospect, the struggles I did win were arguably not worth the
effort). Instead I no longer struggle with them, given the onset of
insights which brought forth entirely new possibilities for ending
struggling.
To regret not having those insights sooner, diminishes them. They come
when they come. When they do it's a
breakthrough.
And if they don't come, they're never known so they're never missed.
Struggles end not with the kinds of possibilities which win struggles.
Rather, struggles end with the kinds of possibilities which render
struggling irrelevant.
I lived my life as a sequence of days - up till then, it was a sequence
of twenty thousand days or so. "Of course your life was a sequence of
days Laurence" you may say, "what else could it have been?" - just
wait: I'll get to that in a moment. Soon after dawn on each of the
latter of those days, I woke. Did my morning prep. Went
swimming
or running for about an hour. Worked,
wrote,
and did whatever it is people do during their day. At the end of the
day I went to bed and
slept.
A night's
sleep
and the night itself were the definitive cut-off between one day ending
and the
next
day starting. Then the
next
day (and the day after that etc) I'd repeat the same sequence all over
again - or at least something pretty similar to it.
I was living my life, as many adages suggest, one day at a time.
Not like a strategy. Not like a coping mechanism. The way I was living
my life one day at a time, was completely unexamined ie it was de
rigueur. It was a way of living which everyone knows
is the way to live a life, a way which no one ever questions. Even more
than that, I had no choice but to live my life one day at
a time, given there was no other option, no other possibility, no other
context
for it.
Sometime around now (it may have been last week or it may have been
five years ago or it may have been earlier, but nonetheless sometime
around NOW) all that shifted. It may have shifted as a
result of my own inquiries into
who I really am
and into the nature of Life. It may have shifted as a result of
being around Werner.
Most likely it was the latter. But it could have been the former. Or a
combination of both. What
happened
was one day I went to bed and
slept
at the end of the day ie at the end of the twenty thousandth day or so
in the sequence. When I woke, I was no longer living the life I was
living the day before ie I was living a completely new life. In this
new life it was blindingly obvious my life has only one
day - a very long day, yes, but nonetheless only one day, an
endless day
which living my life one day at a time, obfuscated.
One day. Not many days. Rather one
endless day
in which I do everything I'll ever do. Instead of there
being an end to this day every twenty four hours, there's no end to it.
Instead of
sleeping
at the end of every twenty four hour day, I
sleepat various times during this one
endless day.
Instead of night being the definitive cut-off between one day ending
and the
next
day starting, darkness occurs over and over again during this one
endless day
- and so, of course, does daylight. And as for one day ending and the
next
day starting, that's a non sequitur for an
endless day,
yes?
You could say the way we take it for granted to live life as a sequence
of days (in my case, as a sequence of twenty thousand days or so), is
living life in agreement - in personal agreement, in
international agreement. You could say living life as one
endless day
is living life as
context
ie as possibility. You could hold it that darkness and daylight herald
the end and the start of each day in a neverending sequence of days by
agreement. Or you could hold it that darkness and daylight occur over
and over again within one day, within one very long day,
within one
endless day
as
context.
Now there's only one day. In this one day, all you'll ever do is what
you do, and you'll never do what you don't do (that's another
marvelous
distinction I got from
Werner).
It's an access to having it all be full, whole, and complete.