"We can march with dogged determination towards our goal, or we can dance, with no destination in mind. We can take the shortest route from point A to point B, or we can embark on a magical mystery tour." Happy Cow
Every now and again I find myself embroiled in an interesting debate or discussion. Some people, like me, enjoy a good old debate just for the enjoyment of it. It is not a means to an end, but an end in itself. It is an intellectual game. Just for fun.
Sometimes people take disagreement personally. They cannot understand the difference between putting a counter-opinion and attacking them as a person. This is usually because they are very personally attached to their opinions. That is to say, they use their opinions or beliefs to define themselves as a person. For example, they might say things like 'I am a Muslim' or 'I am a Socialist'.
Another thing that sometimes happens is that certain people inform me that it seems I always have to have the final word.
This is a strange idea to me, because unless you are trying to reach a definite answer, there is no final word. So I will continue a discussion while I continue to enjoy it. If something else enjoyable takes my fancy, I might move onto that. But I don't see any reason to end an enjoyable discussion. Why does there have to be a final word?
This is very much like life in general. People are rushing here and there to get things done as if there is some kind of deadline. Of course, many people are very strongly conditioned to think that life does have a DEADline. (The clue is in the first syllable). So they haven't got time to carry on debating with me, or singing or dancing or playing football in the park or chilling with some friends or just doing nothing at all.
"Things need to be done! Answers need to be found! Money needs to be made! Rush rush rush. We don't have time for enjoyment. Look out, death is coming any time now! I must DO something!! I'm not sure what difference doing something will make, but I must! I must!! I must!!!"
Your body's physical death is coming. But so what? Which of you can honestly say that they know what death is? You have been taught that death is an end. But do you know that? I don't know that. Could be anything. Just as likely to be another step. And even if it is the end, so what? You'll be dead and totally unable to be bothered about it, so wouldn't it be better to enjoy life to the full instead of rushing round trying to get things done for no apparent reason?
Consider for a moment the outrageous notion that nothing needs to be done. Consider for a moment the possibility that body's physical death is not the end of Life. Consider the possibility that Life never has a final word and life does not have an answer which needs to be decided upon. It isn't a question! It is just a game, a ride, a merry dance to be danced.
"What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work, I shouldn't have done it." Mark Twain
Play when you want, work when you want, rest when you want. If you do that, work will be play anyway. There are no 'have tos', there are no 'shoulds' and there are no 'musts'. Nothing 'needs' doing. But that does not mean that nothing will be done. Do things because you freely choose to do them! Do things because you love doing them!
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Howard Thurman
For me, one of those things is having an pointless, endless debate, just for the fun of it.
The word 'endless' is very interesting. Physicists are often keen to inform us that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it simply changes form. Beginningless and endless. Would you consider Life to be a form of energy? It seems to me that it is just that. Life is the energy that animates your body, an energy that can be neither created nor destroyed. Yes, the body has a beginning and an end, but Life does not.
For Life, there is no final word. No beginning. No end.
Who are you? Are you the body, or are you the life energy that animates it? Energy that can be neither created nor destroyed, that can only change its form.
Consider it, and when you have done so, ask yourself, 'Why all this rushing?'
"By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning. " Lao Tzu
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