Our body in the space is no small thing. It is not comparable to a story about how we should spend our time. It is substantial proof, the ultimate truth about our life and how we are supposed to be living; it is primary information handed to us, just like that. Meanwhile, our mind struggles to figure out how our individual person should be behaving, producing, accomplishing. I find it ridiculous to realize how easy it is to know. It is easy to know, yet not easy to accept.
It’s clearly not comfortable to endure because our mind is consumed with endless interest in our whole story. It is kind of like the current trend of all these TV series available to us, of which I am an active indulger. Some of these stories are phenomenal. So, my thoughts focus too on my own life in the same way I binge-watch episodes. “What will I do?” “Will I do that?” “What will they do?” “What will he do?” “What will happen with this situation today, or in a month, or in two years?” I do not blame modern film as I believe campfire stories and books evoke similar inquiry. We are storytellers by nature, and real-time will never go at the pace of tale-time. We cannot discover our life as rapidly as we can turn the page of a book or click on the next Netflix installment.
Though difficult to tolerate the mental frenzy of curiosity, it is simple to know about our own life. We can see what we are supposed to be doing in every moment of our existence (by looking down at our body in its activity), yet, it often does not settle us. We think there is more to it, and that we need to work now to prepare to find out the next and next things we are going to do. These beliefs aren’t true. To begin with, the first-hand evidence is accurate. Furthermore, it is impossible to know more now about the future.
The problem is we want to know everything now, and we only get to know our life chronicle up till now. (Even if we could uncover the entire thing upfront, we would still compare it to a vision of what we had dreamed and hoped for ourself.) In the meantime, in seeking the whole tale, our mind skips over the part we already do/can know. This pursuit of getting information, like other objects of desire, reminds me of when my son was little. He would beg and beg for something, then I would finally give in, and he would instantly jump on it, “Can I have two?” I remember being utterly shocked, that after all that pushing to acquire the one, he would have the stamina to ask for more! Though frustrating, it was funny to me, and illuminated a small sample of human nature (of course not all children or adults are like this).
Here is the moral of the story: we can know right now the correct story of our life but that is all we get for now.
Jill Eng 