We live our lives distracted by the small stuff.
We worry about our skin, our age, a tooth ache, our job, a tv progamme, the person in the seat next to us on the bus.
That is, until something major happens, like we are diagnosed with a terminal illness, or someone we love dies. Then we are shocked. We sit up and immediately start focusing on the big stuff, the really important things in life.
The truth is, we are all dying, every single minute. Nothing stays the same and nothing is concrete. Nothing is permanent, but everything changes constantly.
To spend time on the small distractions that compete for our attention every day is literally wasting our life. The distractions waste our precious seconds, which turn into minutes, which turn into hours, days, months ... which turn into years. Years of wasted time = years of wasted life.
So we should be aware of the distractions, learn how to avoid being sucked in, how to avoid becoming attached to them and absorbed by them. If we learn how to do this, we can really live, really enjoy our life, every second of it.
Really enjoying life, being deeply happy and contented does not come from the stuff you buy in the shops, because none of that stuff lasts. Instead, it comes from inside. It comes from finding a deeper meaning to life.
Because all external things change constantly, to be attached to them, means being in constant pain as you watch the things you are attached to changing. Attachments to things that will never stay the same, means a life of regret and disappointment, sadness, anger, resentment, because you can't stop the inevitable march of time and the effects it has on our bodies, everything and everyone around us. To be happy we have to accept the impermanence of our world.
The most disastrous attachment of all, is when we think that our world, everything and everyone, exists completely independently of everything and everyone else. To realise that actually there is a deep connection between everyone and everything, is a wake-up call. When we realise this, we have to accept that our lives are created by how we treat our world, everyone and everything in it.
The eternal truth, as without, so within. As you sow, so shall you reap.
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