A crucial inner shift

Oliver Burkeman says the thought that more of life should feel exceptional and engrossing, rather than routine and boring, indicates a crucial and positive inner shift of attitude towards living in the only time we ever truly possess. "It's deeply unsettling to find yourself doubting the point of what you're doing with your life." But it's good to "face the reality that you can't depend on fulfillment arriving at some distant point in the future... the matter needs addressing now." Four Thousand Weeks ch13 p204

That reminds me of something John Lachs said in his first book, Intermediate Man. "Once attention is shifted from the future and we begin to enjoy activities at the time we do them and for what they are, we have transcended the mentality that views life as a process of mediation toward distant ends." The future is now. Of course we must care about the future, and how our choices in the present will impact it. We must allow our vision of a better future to inform those choices. But experience won't wait. Use it or lose it. Our weeks pass so swiftly by. Now's the time.