Musings on Life and Death
Something I've been thinking about recently is that life is never entirely ideal. It makes sense since the concept of things being ideal is that they originate from an idea and ideas are very hard to fully convert into reality, especially when the cooperation of multiple people is involved.
This has been on my mind because I constantly feel like I'm in some sort of waiting period of life, and I don't want to wait my life away. There are things I want to see and do, and obviously, there are going to be periods of my life that are better suited to doing certain of those things, but I can't just sit idly expecting life to send me a sign that says, "Now would be the perfect time to do [insert project]". That's not going to happen. I have to figure out that stuff for myself, which is probably a good portion of my issue: I'm not very self-aware and balancing one's life requires being able to judge how much you can take on at a given time.
So here I am stuck spinning my metaphorical wheels through the mundane necessities of life, those things that you don't particularly want to do, but do because you don't want to live in squalor. While all around me are piles of things I want, sometimes desperately, to accomplish, but I don't know how to even begin.
Life can be so frustrating. Still, at least living gives you the ability to do things and progress, even while it can leave you emotionally, physically, and spiritually drained. I guess that's part of the test of mortality though. We're always on a slope, trying to keep moving forward. Above us is improvement and salvation and at the bottom is frustration and damnation, not eternal damnation at this point, but rather a lack of ability to progress until certain actions are taken. (Cough, cough. Repentance.) Still, our mortality is always there, waiting to stare us in the face.
In the last few months, there have been a number of things that have made me particularly aware of how limited our time can be. Firstly, a member of my husband's extended family passed away quite suddenly from cancer. There was maybe a month between the diagnosis and the death of this individual. While I'd only met her a couple of times it was still jarring to me. I mean, she was an older woman, but without cancer, she would have probably lived another two decades easily. Within a few weeks of this going on two of my sisters got into car wrecks, which totalled their respective cars, but from which they, fortunately, escaped with minor aches and pains.
Life is such a fragile thing. We can make plans, but ultimately we don't know when our time here on Earth will be over. So I'm left wondering how much time I have and if I'll be satisfied with what I've done with my life when it's all over, and the realization, that at present I would not.
This has been on my mind because I constantly feel like I'm in some sort of waiting period of life, and I don't want to wait my life away. There are things I want to see and do, and obviously, there are going to be periods of my life that are better suited to doing certain of those things, but I can't just sit idly expecting life to send me a sign that says, "Now would be the perfect time to do [insert project]". That's not going to happen. I have to figure out that stuff for myself, which is probably a good portion of my issue: I'm not very self-aware and balancing one's life requires being able to judge how much you can take on at a given time.
So here I am stuck spinning my metaphorical wheels through the mundane necessities of life, those things that you don't particularly want to do, but do because you don't want to live in squalor. While all around me are piles of things I want, sometimes desperately, to accomplish, but I don't know how to even begin.
Life can be so frustrating. Still, at least living gives you the ability to do things and progress, even while it can leave you emotionally, physically, and spiritually drained. I guess that's part of the test of mortality though. We're always on a slope, trying to keep moving forward. Above us is improvement and salvation and at the bottom is frustration and damnation, not eternal damnation at this point, but rather a lack of ability to progress until certain actions are taken. (Cough, cough. Repentance.) Still, our mortality is always there, waiting to stare us in the face.
In the last few months, there have been a number of things that have made me particularly aware of how limited our time can be. Firstly, a member of my husband's extended family passed away quite suddenly from cancer. There was maybe a month between the diagnosis and the death of this individual. While I'd only met her a couple of times it was still jarring to me. I mean, she was an older woman, but without cancer, she would have probably lived another two decades easily. Within a few weeks of this going on two of my sisters got into car wrecks, which totalled their respective cars, but from which they, fortunately, escaped with minor aches and pains.
Life is such a fragile thing. We can make plans, but ultimately we don't know when our time here on Earth will be over. So I'm left wondering how much time I have and if I'll be satisfied with what I've done with my life when it's all over, and the realization, that at present I would not.
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