Seasons vs. Days and My Worldview

Due to a number of factors: my current job/life situation, my recent obsession with TEDtalks, and my ways of coping with life, I started thinking about Life.

Sometimes I classify life by lists. Lists help me to evaluate life. I make lists for things that I actually plan on doing and for things that I don't have any real intention of doing at all. I almost never make grocery lists but I often make lists of thoughts, condensing them to simple, bullet-pointed formats.

I started out this morning by trying to figure out my life's aspirations via lists. I have done this any number of times. In high school I had a folder on my computer's desktop entitled "My Ideal Life". it was separated into various sections of ideals I valued at that time and goals I aspired to. Eventually I deleted it so I wouldn't be haunted by all that my current life is not. But for better or worse, I almost always have some such mental list in my head at any given moment.

Sometimes it helps. For instance, I've discovered my life is much better when I sing often. Best if I sing daily. Writing gives me an outlet that allows me to discover hidden worlds within my thoughts (hence my journal and the existence of this blog). Art and music allow me to participate in a singular moment of time in a way that almost nothing else can.

These are facts about my existence in the world and my flourishing in the world. So I decided once again, in response to my search for "what I should do with my life", to list out different things. The things that I value (list 1) and the things that give me life (list 2). My goal being that I would find combinations of those two lists that would give me insight into a career path. And that, as a result, I would figure out how to structure my day so that each day I participate in life fully.

I have also done this ever since I was a kid. I used lists to make a schedule, an hour-by-hour schedule that dictated what I should be doing when to allow me to do the things that are most life-giving (to myself and to others).

What I realize every time is that what had, at one point, been life-giving becomes life-demanding. If I follow the schedule, it limits me rather than freeing me. It produces stress rather than reducing it. It diminishes me to small components rather than acknowledging that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (Gestalt theory?/I'm a Psych nerd).

I have a very Western frame of mind. In this instance, a very Type A, Western frame of mind. I thought about how life tends to be lived out in seasons. In Ecclesiastes, the writer talks about various times: a time to laugh, a time to mourn, etc., etc. I, on the other hand, have a 24-hour mindset to conceptualize Time. I see a day as units to be filled, with each day ideally holding a particle of every separate essence of myself. Self-actualization, in my mind, is actualizing every bit of myself in a given day. People with this mindset would hypothetically arrange the literal seasons of the year into a day, where we could experience fall, summer, winter and spring every single day.

That doesn't work at all. It would be like mixing all of your favorite foods into a single morsel. It ruins and depletes each item of its beauty by assigning it such a small place in a mix. Sure, if you ate every meal in this way, you might finish what would have typically been a single-serving of your favorite food, but you would never appreciate its distinctness from anything else. You would never be able to revel in just that one thing and all of its intricacies.

It's useful for me to consider this in life. I'm a hardcore idealist. An extreme idealist who constantly re-envisions life, its meaning, and my place in the big picture, and I want to live into that reality immediately. Everything to me feels urgent. Everything to me is a global issue. Everything contributes to the positive or negative well-being of the cosmos. And I often feel that if I am not vigilant in producing things of value or living into everything that I value all at once, that my decisions are actively destroying what I care about the most.

I forget about seasons. I forget about the Being vs. Doing dichotomy. I lose myself in trying to be myself so that I can be less but serve more in the bigger picture. It's too much. I can't do it all in a day. I can't do it all.

There are seasons. Those seasons 1) are revealed by God, 2) are demanded by your circumstances, or 3) are only revealed to you in hindsight, or some combination of these three. I am not sure which one in I am now. Probably all three. And I will probably figure that out in hindsight. But recognizing the season I am in, defining it, and reveling in the moment and recognizing its distinctness will allow me to live fully into it, offering the most I can of myself to God and to those around me.

A TEDtalks person said, "We all need a fishbowl." Considering my natural tendencies, I think this is especially true for me, and true to my nature, nothing scares me more.


*Note: This is coming from an INFJ. Read a description online and this entire post will make more sense if I seem crazy to you now.