The one thing that every mystic, spiritual guru, coach, therapist and friend will tell you is that life is not about the big things. It’s not about the milestones, the achievements, dreams realised, it’s all about the journey. It’s in the small stuff. The everyday. The seemingly mundane. It’s seeing as much wonder and feeling as much gratitude as you’re able in each passing moment. Flowers. Sunsets. Children. Your partner. Your friends. These are the things that give our lives meaning and where we experience our deepest joy. As we take our final breaths, these are what will have made our lives matter.
Yet everywhere I look it’s about getting ‘there’ faster. Short cuts. Get there quick (find love, get promoted, make money) schemes. I should confess here that I’ve been suckered into thinking that’s how I need to speak too. To get your attention. If I talk about things taking time, you’ll be turned off. Because despite everything I’ve achieved that’s taken (sometimes considerable) time, I think you haven’t got that tolerance. You can’t put the effort in. It’s now or never baby!
Never has this struck me as more absurd, than when I read about the new 6 second toothbrush. As I was brushing my teeth the conventional way (2 minutes with my electric, dentist approved, toothbrush) I wondered what we needed that extra 1 minute 54 seconds for? What exactly would we achieve with that extra time, even if we were brushing twice a day?
This strikes me as particularly ironic when I consider that there is no ‘there’ for any of us to actually get to. We are all going faster, but we aren’t getting happier or more content. Our lives haven’t become more magical. Because the bliss happens in the spaces. All those tiny moments, fractions of seconds, in between the doing. Those wonderful times, when, before we guilt ourselves into more frantic activity, we allow ourselves to just be.
Most of my clients come to me because they reached their ‘there’. Only to realise that the external there didn’t satisfy them, like they’d been told it would. There are always bigger goals to reach. Higher mountains to climb. Better jobs to do. More promotions to go after. Those of my clients who’ve made it to the very pinnacle of their career, think it must then be about changing employer. When they’ve exhausted that they might also change industry sector. One day you wake up and realise there is no there. Only here.
The truest definition of success is being happy with one’s lot in life. But even that only ever exists here. And now. Never there. There is never any there, for any of us, on any subject.
So why are we so enamoured by the idea of getting ‘there’ faster? And do we need to brush our teeth in less time to appreciate the true meaning of life?
