Relaxing into life

I have spent much of my life thinking there was something else I should be doing. For many years I taught psychology in schools — work I found deeply rewarding and meaningful. Yet I would often take myself off on courses, hoping to become something else:
a hypnotherapist, a coach, a trainer.

The courses were always fascinating and enjoyable, yet I never launched a hypnotherapy or coaching practice.After I retired, I kept enrolling in new trainings, still trying to decide what I was going to do or become in these later years.

As I look back, I see that part of this had to do with status. Teaching is sometimes viewed as a low-status profession, perhaps because it doesn’t directly generate wealth. Our culture prizes the entrepreneurial spirit —the world of business, the world of profit. Yet something deeper was stirring beneath that.

I see now that the roots lay in a quiet resistance to what is: a sense that a different future, a different job, even a different home might finally bring the deep satisfaction I was seeking — or grant me an identity that felt more impressive.

But as I grow older, life’s essence keeps simplifying. There is probably much more past than future now. Some mornings, the diary lies empty —and I am learning to relax into that emptiness. My day is not of lesser worth just because it doesn’t register on any economic ledger. A day really is a gift, even when it holds no listed activity.

Gratitude has to be the starting point. From gratitude flows a desire to be fully present — to the warmth of the shower water, the sun streaming through the window, the passing conversation with a neighbour. We grow so accustomed to the details of our lives that we forget to really notice them. We call them small things, yet they are the essence of life itself.

The thinking mind still argues that this kind of attention is dull —that there are more exciting things to do or plan. But again and again, I discover the quiet peace and satisfaction that arise with presence.

None of this is meant to devalue action. It’s simply a relief to set down the old idea that I should be anything other than who I am.

Perhaps what matters — for any of us —is the way we live today: the way we savour each moment, the way we are present to ourselves, to the small tasks we carry out, and to one another.