“What's It All Mean?”

I recently saw a reference to a new book by Luke Norsworthy called, How to Love the Life You Already Have.

While routinely I see such things, the title of this one stuck around with me. Perhaps the title intimates that too often we don't...love the life we already have. That we are often living in a twilight zone of a life we'd like to have, but don't.

I don't know a lot of details about where this book goes.  But, what is it about our lives that creates a tension between the life we have and the life we'd like to have. Is it a healthy tension? I'm guessing it could be, if we really engage the question.

How about you, are you living the life you want to live?

I overheard this 'Yoga with Adriene' admonition this morning: "Trust you have everything you need — don’t decide where it ends."

Obviously, put together, there are lots of directions to potentially unpack here.

And then, on my way to work, I heard the NRP Tiny Desk rendition of Philharmonik's "What's It All Mean?" which, among other things, at least got me moving:

One version of the question above is about the age old grass-is-always-greener-on-the-other-side trope.  It tends to reflect a pattern of thinking or feeling that we can often fall into.  The common lesson there is that, often, whatever is better about the greener grass isn't always better.  In fact, it can often be the case that it really isn't better over there than it is right here.  It just looks better, for some reason.

But, can I really trust that Adriene's assertion is true, that I have everything I need?  Maybe not everything I want, but everything I need.  For some reason, we don't really like the effort involved with distinguishing between the two, do we?  We too often just don't want to think about it.  We just want what we want and live in that zone, not really addressing what all is going on.

Maybe we're just too lazy.  Or, perhaps, we're in an effect of trauma.  Most of the time, it's something in between that keeps us to asleep to the kind of work that is needed.  To asking questions like, how fulfilling is the everything I want, relative to what I really need or…what's it all mean?

We can smile and relax.  Everything we want is right here in the present moment.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh