Listened to some Joseph Goldstein this morning (3:30 am, woke up, trying to fall back asleep). He talked about motivations, past and future, and death.
I seem to have been obsessed with the past and future lately. Past in the form of just thinking a lot about what has happened and why people have come to be where they are. Understanding the past means understanding what you can do about the future. But also a clinging to what has passed. And maybe I need to just let it go. With friends, with exes, with my mom. Everything changes and acceptance of that is important. Otherwise you just obsess about people and not about living with them. Over analyzing, feel like I’m doing something when in reality I’m doing nothing. I also spend so much time prepping for the future instead of just doing things in the present. But it’s just honestly easier to prep for the thing instead of actually doing the thing. But I’m also afraid that I’ll look up one day and realize I let all this time pass me by and didn’t do anything, just prepped. And then death comes upon me and it’s just over before it even started. Also spending too much time worried about others, and my relationship to/with them is a big hold-back. I really believe if everyone just does their thing, we all come together in some beautiful way. But obsessing about what others are doing in relation to you seems counterproductive. It takes you away from your own things. At the end of the day, I trust the people around me will turn out to be okay — with or without me. Not that I want to just disappear, just stop obsessing.
I’ve been thinking about death a lot, about the moment E dies or the moment I die. We are each other’s people and one of us will not be there for the other during such a big ‘milestone.’ I know I will be scared if I am who I am today. Working on it and hopefully I arrive at some other place before the time comes. I find comfort in Thoreau’s approach. And ’til the end, he was still in the present, doing something, his thing. “there was much comfort in perfect disease as in perfect health, the mind always conforming to the condition of the body”
