In writing about the question of How Much Time Is Left? as a segway into finding more meaning and purpose in life, my first thought was to come up with ideas on how to make the most out of the time we have left in whatever we are doing. In other words, how can we create more meaning and more purpose by striving and achieving more? How can we ensure that we do not waste any of this limited and precious time that we have left until we die?
However, there is another way to think about time. An article by Martha M. Crawford that she wrote after her cancer diagnosis offers a different perspective on ambition, striving and accomplishment:
Ambition has a necessary function: It may offer hope in times of desolation, or motivate us out of states of suffering and depletion. Yet aspirations have their shadows. Striving can imply that the present moment is inadequate. It seems as though ambition has been elevated into a distorted religion. But our relentless cultural habit of structured goal-setting and futurizing are nonsensical once we gaze into the abyss.
I relate to what Crawford is saying. Much of my life has been about achieving and accomplishing from earning my Eagle Scout to graduating from the Naval Academy to becoming an IRONMAN Triathlete, etc. Each of those accomplishments—all of which look great on a resume—were never quest fulfilling. I accomplished something and then it was on to the next thing. Accomplishing came as a result of striving for something more or better in the future. If I wasn’t accomplishing or striving, I felt guilty or inadequate. If I felt unhappy or anxious, I didn’t want to feel it so I looked to other things to help me feel better rather than sitting with the sadness or anxiety.
Crawford’s realization from her cancer diagnosis was that, “Each moment, pleasant or unpleasant, had become an end in itself, rather than a means to an end.” In other words, can we be fully present with whatever is happening in the moment without making it wrong or bad or even good?
Crawford summarized another way to think about the question of what we do with the time we have left: “The tasks were simple: to fully live the one day I’d been given; to be who I meant to be in each moment, to the best of my abilities.”
I like that.
Kindly,
David