Tomorrow Never Knows

Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth.  Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power…. It isn’t [so terrible to be a timid man] if you are going to be immortal, but if you are going to die there is no time for timidity.

-Don Juan

Have you ever wished you could live some part of your life over, correct mistakes you made, take risks you feared taking, study harder, get laid more, or jump on opportunities you missed the first time around?  Or maybe the opposite is the case: maybe you sit around day-dreaming about a future that never arrives while the present moment slips away before your glazed-over eyes.

Many of us are guilty of having spent too much time pondering thoughts that begin with phrases like “what if…” “if only…” and “one day…”  But here’s the thing: there is only one time and it’s Now.  Yesterday is about as real as last night’s dream and tomorrow may never come–and if it does come, we all know that it will bring it’s own bag-full of expectations to throw you off course.

Now, don’t hang your head in shame or regret for all the moments you’ve lost.  They’d gone.  There’s not a damn thing you can do about it, either.  Feeling sorry isn’t going to help.  In fact, it’s only going to waste more time, and you don’t know how much of that precious resource you have left.  You may live to be a hundred or you may collapse dead before you reach the end of this post.

All you hold in your hands is this moment.  And the question is, what are you going to do with it?  Are you going to set it aside and stroke yourself revising your yesterdays and fantasizing about your tomorrows, or are you going to grab today by the hilt and thrust it at the world?

I’ve been reading Code of the Samurai, a modern translation of a 400 year old guide for Japanese Warriors, and I’m struck by the emphasis that the Samurai placed on death.  The first line of the text reads,

One who is supposed to be a warrior considers it his foremost concern to keep death in mind at all times.

At first blush, it seems morbid having death on the brain 24/7.  Reading on, however, one comes upon this:

If people comfort their minds with the assumption that they will live a long time, something might happen, because they will think they will have forever to do their work and look after their parents–they may fail to perform for their employers and also treat their parents thoughtlessly.

I don’t particularly care for the emphasis on employers, and yet I find that there is still great truth in what the author is saying.  If you want to get the most out of every moment, then act like it may be your last.  If you think you have all the time in the world to accomplish your goals, make up for lost time with your kids, travel the world, or do whatever the hell it is you think you need to do with your life, then there’s no worry.  You’re going to cut corners, procrastinate, half-ass your way through life thinking, “There’s always later.”   But if you live like a Samurai, if you accept your death as a foregone conclusion, recognize that each and every breath you take may be your last, then you’re going to make it matter, you’re going to put every bit of life you’ve got into Now.  And whatever you think your work on this planet is, that’s exactly the focus and commitment that it requires–nothing less will do.

As Don Juan said in the epigraph above, “if you are going to die there is no time for timidity.”  We are all going to die and none of us knows when.  Live your life as a warrior.  Treat each moment as if it’s your last (one of those moments will be your last) and go out in a blaze of glory, hold nothing back.  In every moment, every taste, whether you’re making love to a woman, washing your hands, engaged in your work or reading your child to sleep at night, hold nothing back.

Cease the f*cking day.

Shut Up!: An Argument for Follow-Through

Sure, there are going to be times when you need to talk through shit, times when you don’t know what the hell to do with yourself or how to get it done.  Talking things through with a trusted friend or family member may help you sort things out, come to a decision about where you’re going or how to get there (though I’d caution you against relying too much on others to help you make your decisions).  Once that decision is made, though, more talk is not only pointless–it’s detrimental to your purpose.  Once that decision is made, it’s yours and you need to own it.  It’s at that moment that you need to just shut the hell up and act.

I came across this in an article from back in 2007 by Craig Harper at blogcritics.org

“Too many of us spend too much of our life stuffing around, not doing the things we know we should. We talk about what we want and how we’re going to get it. We just never seem to do it. We talk ourselves into inactivity. We continue to find new and interesting reasons for not changing. We delude ourselves into believing we’ll do it soon, but for some very logical reason (of course) now is never the time. We know we’re full of it. Those closest to us know it, but we get pretty good at living a lie.

We avoid change because we are fearful. At the same time, we never do anything to get strong (like making those decisions, taking risks, and getting uncomfortable). Ironically, it’s the change process (the one we avoid) that makes us strong. We’re smart, we’re informed, and we’ve done the whole self-help thing. We even have the answers for our friends, but when it comes to us we’re perpetually treading water and spinning our wheels.”

How many times do you know exactly what you need to do in a given situation, but instead of actually doing it, you waste your time telling people what you’re “planning” to do?  If you’re anything like me, you’ve wasted an awful lot of time putzing around telling people what you wanted to do instead of just getting it done.  At various times in my life, I was going to apply to a Ph.D program, get a tattoo, write a novel, hit on this or that woman, clean out the garage, learn a foreign language–the list of things I haven’t done far exceeds the list of things I have done.  Instead of acting, I wasted a god-awful amount of time talking.

And time wasted is only part of the problem with running your mouth about the decisions you’ve supposedly made about your life.  Worse is the potential that such idle chatter has to deflect you from your purpose.  I experienced this just last week when prattling on about this blog with friends and family members.  Here’s some of the feedback I received:

“Forget the blog, bro, you should get a job playing piano on a cruise ship.”

“Who’s going to bother reading?”

“I love the title.  Everything else is ‘bleh’.”

Listen, even the most well-meaning people can deter you from your purpose–everyone is going to have their own ideas about what is best for you.  But they can’t see the world through your eyes.  And they sure as shit can’t see the worlds that lie behind your eyes.  So, when you know what you want, the time for chit-chat is at an end–do yourself a favor, shut up and act.