As I mentioned in my last letter, I had been thinking for a while about continuing my work on Esferas, but I couldn’t find the time. This Sunday, however, there was a shift in my perspective that not only led me to write and send a letter immediately, but also to sit down and write again the very next day. I want to share this change in perspective to shed some light on the modern problem of “never stopping doing things, and yet feeling like there’s not enough time to do the things we want to do.”
The problem was that everything on my to-do list seemed equally urgent. Homework for tomorrow’s class, responding to an email from a professor, a message from a friend, exercising (I skipped yesterday and can feel it), doing laundry (I only have one pair of underwear left), cooking, seeing friends, reading at night, meditating in the mornings… The problem began to resemble what one experiences when going to a restaurant and the menu is too long. In the end, I would often take so long to decide that the kitchen would close, and I’d have to leave without having eaten anything.
Obviously, with that constant panorama of urgent tasks, getting back to Esferas was becoming a struggle. Esferas isn’t something to be done in a hurry. It’s not urgent. No one demands that I do it. And yet, its name was written in my agenda every week, patiently waiting for me to give it my time.
Finally, this Sunday, the number of things I had to do reached an absurd point, and as often happens when we reach a limit, a new perspective emerged:
The question shifted from “what is most urgent?” to “what is most important?“
The urgent is determined by the external world: the fast pace of Berklee, the boss’s expectations, the limited number of underwear… constantly prioritizing the urgent means living reactively. It’s living with too short of a perspective, facing life day by day, solving, surviving, but without a clear and broader vision of where things are heading.
On the other hand, the important is purely subjective, it comes from within, and it is determined by our values. What do you value most? = What is most important? Learning to prioritize the important is learning to live proactively.
With that question, I decided to number my daily tasks in order of importance, and then I would start with the first one without worrying about whether I’d reach the end of the list. Interestingly, what I had been putting off for a month suddenly appeared in the top spot: Esferas.
The question “what is important?” lifted me to a height from which I could see the next 20 years and made me ask myself: Where do I want to go? What do I want to build? Immediately, the homework for the next day disappeared, just as the stones on a path vanish when seen from an airplane. I saw all the paths, the forests, the mountains in the distance, and the sea peeking behind. Berklee’s assignments are irrelevant at that height. Esferas, however, is a path that, if I choose to walk it, will take me all the way to the sea. Esferas leads me to a life where I constantly cultivate my gifts, my faith, my ability to create, reflect, and express, and it guides me to share all this with a community that is growing little by little (welcome, Jackson and Aryan) and that will be the one I work with in the future, with whom I’ll share culture, language, time, space, path, affection, meaning. It leads me to a life that springs from within, from who I truly am, and not a life shaped by external demands.
Esferas, yes. Counterpoint homework… also, but afterwards.
I discovered with this a way to put values and priorities into practice. I’m beginning to sense that if we had our priorities very clear, we would rarely have to make decisions; most of them would get resolved by themselves. Perhaps that’s why all the enlightened men I’ve read agree that, when living in God, doubt disappears. There’s only trust, listening, and certainty.
Perhaps that’s why the first commandment isn’t “Do your job well and keep your house clean,” but “Love God above all things.”
Maybe that’s part of what Jesus meant when saying “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” in the Sermon on the Mount.
Dr. Hawkins also said, “What is the purpose of human life? These existential questions arise and they seem abstract, but it is how you answer these, which look like a generality, that defines how you choose the particulars”
So, what’s important is whatever aligns with your highest vision of that question: What is the meaning of human life?
Here’s an answer that deeply resonates with me, given by Dr. Hawkins in that same class:
In my view, the purpose of human life is to serve God, to serve humanity and to serve yourself. To serve yourself, to serve God by serving yourself, and to serve your fellow men. Fulfill your obligation and your destiny and potentiality. To serve God, self, and fellow men. Having done that, is there anything left that you can think of to do? Hahaha! That pretty much clears off the desk, doesn’t it? You’ve done all you can to serve God, to fulfill your obligation to yourself to move from self to Self, and to your fellow men, and thereby serve God. To be a channel of God’s will for the good of all mankind as well as your own evolution because, after all, you are part of mankind, so don’t leave yourself out. It isn’t you versus mankind. You are part of mankind. So in serving mankind, you serve yourself as well.
I’ll leave it here for today; it’s enough to contemplate for a lifetime. Now, time to do some homework.
With all my love,
A.
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