Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to not own your own life. To live for a cause, knowing you will die before you have to. What does it feel like to believe in what you do, knowing your actions will save other people's lives, or at least make them better? What does it feel like to go about your daily grind, except your life is not a grind, because your life can lead to power. Or not. Or death. An early death that you are willing to accept. Maybe if you have seen death around you it changes your perspective. What drives someone to live that way? Is it power? True altruism? Retribution?
We all walk around with the illusion that we are important in the world. That we play our little part and it all matters somehow for someone. But does it? Or is the exact opposite, do we all live thinking we are not important, when each of us is. Maybe we fit into a cosmic puzzle that can't exist with a piece missing. But the truth is some people's death make the world shift, other's don't.
I worry about whether the house is clean, what to make for supper. Somehow the insignificance of it is all that matters. How about worrying about the fact that I might get killed because I am fighting for a cause, how does that change dinner? What if I am mothering someone who will change the world?
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What drives someone to live that way? Insanity. Delusion. The only life there is, is the one in front of you. To imagine a more important cause, a higher value, is just wild imagination, and the source of immense and eternal suffering.
ReplyDeleteYou are mothering someone who will change the world. Her world, the only world there is.
Dinner matters.
There are those who give up a more "normal" life to give themselves to something "greater". And those who cook dinner and attempt to help a baby sleep and show for work day after day. And it is all life, yes?
ReplyDeleteYour words remind me of the eagle vision and mouse vision, both valuable. From the flight of an eagle we can see a big picture, hold intention and what we most value. But then, someone, the mouse who can only see what is right in front of her, must put it all into action. To make the dinner. To love. To live life as it happens.