If you think about it, each day in your life is a little life in itself. You wake up to your alarm, which is…alarming…just like birth, you’re groggy and can’t think too well for a few minutes, like early childhood, then you go to work and do what you’re told for around half the day, which is like being told what to do throughout school and also your working years, and when you get home you get to do what you want for a while although you weren’t quite as lucid as you were during the day, like retirement, then you start to get groggy again and can’t think too well, like old age, then you go to sleep. You die. Every day.
And when you dream, when you die, the conditions are the same. Time and space are out of the equation, and the experience is so different from what we, as conscious humans, are used to, that the only way we can begin to understand those conditions is by imperfectly translating them through our physical brains. Our translations impose temporal and spatial constraints on the reality of the dream/death world.
And just like when your whole life ends, you’ll wake up and do it again in another life. You’ll wake up to live another day, another little life.
If you live to 75, you’ll have just over 20,000 little lives (taking into consideration that ages 0 – ~15 it’s not really up to you to decide how to live your mini lives).
Some of my best mini lives have been some of my most “irresponsible” ones. I’ll tell you the story of a memorable one. Mind you I’m not saying you can just call out of work and do what you want all the time, which is what I did that on that particular day. Well, you can do that, but the consequences would likely be undesirable. Once in a while though, on a whim, it’s great just to tell your boss, “I can’t come in today, sorry,” and if he/she asks why, just say it’s for personal reasons, then go do whatever you want.
Side note: this fictional story is very loosely based on the day I’m about to describe.
It was late spring in 2007 and I woke up around 10 am. I was supposed to have been at work at 9:15. I pretended to be stuffed up, called my boss and said my allergies were terrible and I couldn’t make it to work. Most of my time at that job was spent talking on the phone so it was somewhat reasonable not to want to go to work if my voice sounded like I was holding my nose shut, although a bit suspect to call out after I was supposed to have been in my cubicle.
I said fuck it and packed my fishing stuff in my car and drove to one of my favorite lakes, which happened to be near the casino…which is part of the reason it’s one of my favorite lakes.
I blasted my favorite music on the ride, and when I got to the lake, I inflated my float tube, got in, and paddled around for a few hours. I caught more than 20 bass, and it was a perfect, warm, sunny day.
Then I drove to the casino to play poker for a few hours. 5/10 limit with a full kill (when a pot reaches $100 or more the next hand is played as 10/20 – that won’t make sense if you’re not a poker player, but just know that was an action-packed game). I played good poker but more importantly, I got great cards. In retrospect, it was as if the Universe told me, “Nice going today, you deserve a break.” Two hours later I drove home with an extra $350 cash in my pocket.
That was a damn good mini life. I spent the day outside doing exactly what I wanted to and catching a bunch of beautiful bass, and I made more money playing poker than I would have had I been at work. Plus, I still made money at work because it was paid time off.
Even if most of your mini lives suck, if you create a few awesome ones like I did that day and have done many, many days since, when you’re in the middle of a shitty one, just thinking about and reliving the awesome ones in your head can make the shitty ones a bit less so.
How are you choosing to live today’s mini life? How will you choose to live tomorrow’s?