🐥The Paradox of Now #24

Back to Reality

Hi people!

We’re jumping straight back into it this week.

If there’s one word I’ve heard more than any other since Glastonbury, it’s this:

Routine.

Routine, routine, routine.

It’s worth remembering that we build routines for a reason.

It’s the thing that makes room for the spontaneity and chaos we enjoy.

And if part of your routine includes taking ten minutes to read this, then I appreciate it.

Now let me give you a taste of what's coming:

🐥 A meditation book not about meditation
🐥 Two fish on the triceps
🐥 Double deckchair dunces

🥚Eggstra News🥚

Your weekly dose of some fascinating and fun finds:

📘Meditations for Mortals – From the 4000 Weeks guy. Like a retreat in book form. My biggest inspiration right now.

🎣Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing – I don’t care about fishing. But Bob Mortimer? Funny, wholesome, magic.

🧇 Nonpractisinggenius – Creator of Waffle Wednesday. Wholesome, thoughtful, and a quietly brilliant corner of the internet.

The Paradox of Now

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Outlived by an Email

The to-do list feels endless at the best of times. And what is crazy about to-do lists is that they are universal.

I literally have a widget on my work computer called ‘Microsoft To Do’.

And to-do lists are all I seem to hear at the moment.

Especially at this time of year in a workplace, when people are coming back from their summer holidays.

Emails are stacked higher than ever. The to-do list piles up and the overwhelm becomes suffocating and seemingly on trend.

But this isn’t just about the to-do list in work. This is the to-do list of life.

And whether we like it or not, we all experience these very similar feelings. Because we are all connected by the one unspoken truth of our finite existence.

I write this because I feel it. And if I feel something, there is a good chance others will too.

And so I want to see if I can help just that one other, who unfortunately for them, is more like me than they’d maybe like.

I am the archetypal sufferer of this overwhelming to-do list mentality.

Otherwise why would I even be writing about this at all?

This is an open journal more than anything. It’s like you’re peering over my left shoulder on the train, trying to decipher the scribbles on my page.

Fortunately for you, it’s not handwritten.

I feel this suffering after a busy June of being away. Coming back into reality has been intense. And I have not had a chance to fully decompress.

It’s so overwhelming that reality feels as though it shifts. And the weirdest thing is, everything and everyone just carries on without you.

Reality simply exists around me and does not even acknowledge my existence.

And it’s only me who can nestle back into the rhythm of my own life, through the choices I make, while the rest of the world carries on.

Reality does not wait for me to catch up.

Reality is not like my friends who wait while I queue for underwhelming food or take a long-drop toilet break at Glastonbury.

But reality is what I have to face. And within that reality is the harsh truth that life does not wait for me.

The to-do list is still there lingering in the shadows of my currently distorted reality.

Nobody is coming to save me. Nobody is coming to save us.

And the truest truth of all is that we are finite creatures with infinite choices and infinite things on our to-do list.

True reality is that we will die with things still left on our to-do list.

True reality is that there will always be emails left unopened in our inbox.

True reality is that death is inevitable.

Memento mori people.

So, the question is:

What do we do about a reality that does not care for us, an infinite number of things to do and only a finite existence?

I’m glad you asked.

And yet I don’t really have a full answer. I just have a few reframing suggestions that may help.

Firstly, see it as a positive that you’ll never get to do it all.

Your to-do list isn’t difficult. It’s actually impossible. And that’s liberating.

You can do anything in this world. But you can’t do everything.

Which means you can never finish it, so in many ways, it does not really matter how much you complete.

It’s freeing to accept that. To have the mindset that “there is no point.”

Not in a hopeless sense. I don’t mean you curl up under a duvet waiting for the darkness to swallow you whole.

I mean that you can then pour your time and energy into the things that truly make a difference to you and the world around you and the rest of them can just fall by the wayside.

I caveat this with the understanding that, while some tasks may have serious consequences if left incomplete, this is assumed as a given. The focus here is on the additional tasks.

The stress of trying to be perfect and completing everything will kill you more quickly than the stress of letting some of them go.

That’s why I’m writing this now. I could be basking in the greens and blues, but this is what makes me feel most alive. Even if my brain still feels a few levels below its usual capacity.

And anyway, I’m sure I’ll find ten minutes to fit in a walk.

I feel like I have had no control this week. A mini-internal crisis of sorts. But I can’t wait for it to be over, because the world keeps spinning, and I need to spin with it.

If we keep waiting for the perfect time to begin, then we are just postponing our lives.

We will never have full control.

We must choose what not to do as much as what we choose to do.

But take a second to really think about that.

We have a choice.

And that is an insane privilege.

There is an alternative reality where we could have been born as a British peasant in medieval Wales.

Choice would not have been an option.

There was no concept of time for them. Reality was whatever happened right in front of them. No pressure to use their time wisely or weigh up life decisions.

Their to-do list was survival.

Wake with the sun.

Work in the light.

Sleep in the dark.

Tasks got done when they needed doing. The rhythm of life came from the work itself.

Nothing more.

But us?

We have the luxury, for the most part, of choosing what goes on our to-do list.

Yes, there’s the life admin and putting food on the table. I get that.

But if you’re reading this, I’m guessing you also have agency and ambition. You’re likely pursuing things outside of just survival.

How privileged are we that we even get to reflect on this?

That we get to do things other than just survive?

That we even get to acknowledge our own finite existence.

That our biggest dilemma is how to fit in writing this newsletter around pickleball practice.

I am not a peasant in medieval Wales working on a farm.

Instead, a few weeks ago I was on a farm, but through my own choice.

I was on Worthy Farm, spending a small percentage of my finite time on this planet in the company of my best friends, music, and wizards playing the piano in a forest.

Incredible.

The point I’m trying to make, if you’ll excuse some peasant waffle around a point that almost worked but not quite, is that we have a choice.

We can choose many of our struggles. We can choose what goes on our to-do list.

And now, we can choose to come to terms with the fact that we are living in a golden age.

We can choose to accept that we are finite creatures with infinite possibilities.

We can choose to let go of control.

And we can choose to improve our small corner of the world by focusing only on the few things that matter most.

So yes, please add “contemplate own finite existence” between “buy oat milk” and “learn to blink effectively” to your to-do list!

🐥 Haiku’s Haiku 🐥

This photo might not look like much, but it holds fond memories.

Mostly because of what Haiku is perched on.

A double camping chair.

A doff of the cap to Henry and Skew, who made me laugh every single time I saw them relaxing in that monstrosity.

An absolute delight.

🌴 Palm Tree Euphoria 🌴

We once couldn’t book a lads holiday to Malia at a travel agent because our mate didn’t know if his name was Samuel or Samual.

That’s all.

See you next week Dashing Ducks! 🐥

P.S. if this throwback to booking holidays like it’s 2009 made you laugh, forward it to a fellow duckling who remembers paper brochures and name-based identity crises.

Word of beak is how we help improve our small corner of the world.

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