‘I have wasted my life’ and ‘I don’t want to waste my life’ seem to be common thoughts. We may have had them ourselves or have heard them in our heart to heart chats with someone. I often wonder: When did we first become a believer of the thought that ‘life CAN be wasted’? How can a life be wasted if we’re alive?
I think it may have originated by those looking to achieve a time-bound goal that must be achieved before a deadline. Of course if I have a goal, a life wasted is a life that doesn’t move towards that goal right? Totally!
If you’ve ever had the thought ‘I’m afraid I’m wasting my life’ or ‘I have wasted my life’ when it came to jobs, relationships, marriage etc…I suggest you ask yourself ‘what is it you wanted to achieve or are afraid of not achieving in this life’. Is what you want a time-bound goal? Is what you want a concept that has come from outside of you? Is it truly what you want from the very bottom of your heart? Can you be sure that if you achieve it, you will have less regrets or fears?
It may be discovered (and it may not) that the true goal is hiding under the skin of the time-bound goal. The true goal may be happiness, fulfilment, peace, truth, connectedness, belonging…all timeless and available at any given moment. It may also be discovered that our clever clever mind has framed the timeless that can be had NOW into a time-bound goal. ‘One day, I will learn to be at peace, connected, centered’….ONE DAY….which means not today, certainly not NOW. This is an automatic / unconscious postponement and is how the mind gets stuck in a brighter future. The narrative could in a similar way get stuck in a dim past: ‘I could have learnt to be the better version of me (happy/peaceful etc) all these years, but now time has past’. This again has an underlying tone that implies if it wasn’t done then, it can’t be done now, imprisoning the timeless in the cage of time.
The concept of a wasted life is based on a desire that needs to be achieved. As I look with wide open eyes, not taking the teachers’ voice as an authority, I see more and more that no desire can deliver what it promises – none! Simply because desires’ promise a life in the future and we are here. They are not as glittery as they make out to be because, what they promise to accomplish can only be found here and now in the absence of all concepts and all desires. Desires are not fundamentally bad to be avoided at all cost. To be ‘desire-less’ is not to become yet another desire. Nevertheless, it helps to carefully examine them to possibly discover that they are noise. The noise that springs out of a silence impregnated with those gifts that a ‘life not wasted’ promises.
Next time the fear or regret of a wasted life comes to your mind, can you put your sceptic hat on and doubt all concepts, beliefs and words around it until they fall away? Can you then watch and see what remains? You may come to agree with T.S. Eliot who wrote:
“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
May 2013
P.S. It is now Sept 2016, I would like to add:
If you have desires or regrets and something can be done about it, follow it through. Let the thought be supported by your actions. That integrity between mind and action will uncover many gems. If nothing can be done about it, i.e. it’s about a past that cannot be changed why waste your life (now) thinking about what you cannot change? What can you change? How can you stop wasting your life today, now? Just look after this now and find out what unravels! 🙂 All the best.
So very true Dorna, a beautiful parable. If you make the change in breaking the pattern of this destructive way of thinking, you will experience a freedom that no words can give justice to. I was a believer that my life had been wasted, my daily mantra said I was an underachiever a passive waster, average this, average that just a very average Mrs Average, unaspiring not much to offer, one of life’s plodders, this belief created a poisonous cocktail of caustic emotions that I liked to drink regular so as not to slip out of the prototype, with hind- sight I can say it was a form of self- harm but thankfully and unexpectedly an unimaginable power, wasn’t willing to hear it anymore and forced its way urgently into my whole being and laid bare that these thoughts had to ‘Stop’, with this I was presented with the realisation that for most of my adult life I had been living, breathing and eating these thoughts and the effect both mentally and physically was exhausting to the point I was fighting to stay with life and could easily pull out of the challenge . I, me, no other bestowed a life sentence of confusion and self- doubt, permitting misery to dictate to happiness, I stunted the growth I longed for. Then came the wonderful day of body crushing soul cleansing and declaration of spirit, with the commandment to begin living.
I now understand no part of our lives are wasted all that we encounter whether good, bad or okay are gifts, a tool to enable self -growth, the only way out of any dilemma is through, embrace the opportunity of self-discovery, don’t allow the heart to harden keep it soft and you will see beauty available in the here and now, this is where we grow not in the future or the past and it’s never too late to try, your life knowledge will serve others. There’s no greater teacher than life.
‘Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences all events are a blessing given to us to learn from ‘
Elisabeth Kubler – Ross
With gratitude X