DK Time Lapse. October 9, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos of yesterday’s glorious sunrise here.
Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
I put my hand on the altar rail. ‘What if … what if Heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you’re dying of thirst, or when someone’s nice to you for no reason, or …’ Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me, ‘Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite’ … ’S’pose Heaven’s not like a painting that’s just hanging there for ever, but more like … Like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you’re alive, from passing cars, or … upstairs windows when you’re lost …”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks (Random House; September 2, 2014)
You may be thinking that due to the dearth of blog posts recently, that Wednesday’s, Thursday’s, Friday’s, Saturday’s, Sunday’s and Monday’s are for Time Lapses as well — and, you wouldn’t be far off the mark.
I know that you’ve all been anxiously waiting to learn about the time-lapse process. Here’s the secret sauce.
To start today on a path toward enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning, consider the possibility that you don’t need to learn anything new. Instead, you may want to unlearn some false lessons that have pervaded the culture over the past few years. The first untruth is that you must know your destination; the second is that a good life is one that minimizes suffering; and the third is that you must know and live your own truth. The Dominican sages and the modern scientists together show that these are all fake news and serious impediments to a happy life.
In their place, I suggest that you start your path of life by repeating each morning these three affirmations:
I do not know what this day will bring, but I will live it the best I can, with an attitude of love and generosity.
I am grateful for the good I experience today, but I do not fear the bad, which is part of being alive and an opportunity for learning and growth.
I do not possess the absolute truth, but today I will seek it with honesty, an open heart, and a spirit of adventure.
…You will notice that all of the modern untruths I’ve identified have one big thing in common: They say you should focus on yourself—your future, your career, your discomfort, your truth. All moral teaching aside, how boring is that? I can think of no better way to miss the awesome majesty of life than to focus egotistically on a psychodrama in which you are the star.
Happy people can zoom out to see and fully enjoy the world around them. But that means standing up to the lie that you are the center of things. That is the essence of humility and a great secret to happiness. We could add one more affirmation to complete the list above: I will focus today on the miraculous world outside myself.
— Arthur C. Brooks, from “Some Dominican Wisdom We Can All Use” (The Atlantic, May 23, 2024). Adapted from the commencement speech delivered on May 19, 2024, at Providence College, a Catholic institution founded by Dominican friars.
Our lives seem to consist of a string of moments. I get up in the morning, and the moments just tick off as I go through the day. And usually, we greet each moment, if we’re honest about it, with a little twist of a reaction in our mind. And that reaction is: “I like this, but I don’t like that.” Or, “I’m neutral about it.” It’s the same with the people who cross our path: “I like them,” or “I don’t like them,” or “I haven’t thought about it.” Particularly, this is how we respond to the tasks that confront us during the day: “I don’t want to do that; it doesn’t suit me.” Or, “It’s okay with me; I’m glad to do that.” We live as if we have a little judge that’s sitting inside of us, wagging a finger at everything. Now, we’re not really living our life; we’re just trying to get it all fixed so it suits the judge. We can’t enjoy our experience or other people because the judgment and the emotion, this concoction in our head, runs our life.
Our practice enables us to take the ordinary moments of our life—one after another—and experience them without judging, trying to fix, holding tightly, or running away. Suppose I’m a quiet person, and I meet somebody who is noisy and boisterous. My first thought may be, “I don’t like her.” The judgment has already pushed me into withdrawing. The only thing we know is the fact that we are reacting. Often, we don’t even notice we are reacting; we just react, react, react, and react. It probably occurs a thousand times a day—almost constantly.
