On the Other 99% of Life

06/19/2006 7:32 AM – 7:53 AM

That you stand behind a desk for six hours a day during the weekdays does not change the fact that you are biologically designed to be a hunter-gatherer. There are things that can be learned from that perspective. That sometimes the Perhaps of the world outside the small one you inhabit seems to vibrate with greater potentiality does not change the fact that you take yourself with you and are bound by laws of physics and present economy.

Make money and save as much of it as you can. Future pleasantries are paid for with present work. What is it that you question again? Is this all? Yes. In every circumstance that you can imagine, you will still have to recognize the base reality of your existence. You were born, you will die, and you can’t know what comes after. In the meantime, you are doing. This is what it means to be alive. You are not Braveheart. You are not the Gladiator. You are not Neo. Neither were they. Your life, like the lives of the millions of lives of the other people that have, do, and will exist are just lives. Be ye whatever you are and be content in that.

This is enough. Your great battle is to get up in the morning and go to work. Every day. Your great struggle is to eat the right foods and exercise as is fitting the descendant of the hunter-gatherers. Your life will not make for an excellent movie. Your life is just itself. Just like everyone else that has ever existed. Good luck plays in, as does bad luck. But, for the most part, it’s just getting up and going to work. Napoleon's life makes for a good story because 99% of it is left out. If they left out 99% of your life, you’d make a good story too. There is no need to be great. That is the great con of man. You need only feel the greatness of your own little life. Let go of the lie that there are great men. There are no great men only men. Some of them had more peace, and others more wisdom, and others more photogenic. Be whatever it is that you are supposed to be right now. That is great enough. Perhaps you will find your cabin, but if you do not learn to be content in this waning city, you will not be content in the green county. Let go. Let go of everything except what you need to be doing right now. This is all there is and it is more than enough.