On not wasting your life

". . . four decades have shown me that the achievement trajectory doesn't go infinitely up, that time is limited, that choices are essential and that life need not be a train that comes at you, but rather a walk through a garden where you choose the route.
. . . I was determined not to waste as much of the second half of my life listening to the white noise of self-deprecating internal chatter, and while I was at it, to gravitate toward the people in my life who love me as I am.
I began to cultivate something that feels a lot like faith: in myself, in my art, and in the physical world that allows for art's creation, in the people I love, and even in something larger that I never know whether to call the Universe or God."

Quoted from Pam Houston's essay on "Turning Forty" printed in the Dec. 2003/Jan. 2004 issue of More magazine, published by Meredith Corporation, Des Moines, IA 50309.

Our part in creation

Most of us, if not all of us at some time, feel like we are the center of the universe, looking out at creation. If we would bring ourselves just a little bit closer in to our selves and take another look from the nearer perspective, we might see that creation is the center and we are merely a part of it. A wonderful, unique part, but a part nonetheless and not the whole.
From the perspective of a part, we can then look out expansively and see the vastness of creation and the relative insignificance of anything we might think is so desperately important.
We might also see that the function of being a part is not to accomplish something by ourselves, but is just to be and let the organism use its parts in the way intended, whatever that is. It isn't our job to worry about it.
Rather than being uncomfortable because things are not perfect (ego), we can release ego and rejoice in the fact that the miracle occurred that allowed us for this brief time to be aware of ourselves and of the creation seen and unseen.
If we worry about every little detail of our existence, if we are saddened or angry because things do not go our way, if we fear things to come and dwell on the imperfections of things past, we will accomplish nothing more than a nonsentient, living creature will in its life, because we all end up in the same place and same state.
So release ego and embrace creation for the short time that you are aware.