I suddenly find myself with the ‘gift’ of extra free time, and I immediately sense that voice in the background telling me I should “make the most of my time” and “be productive”. That voice wants me working towards the future (at the expense of fully living in the present). That voice wants me to plan for things that will give me credit or validation on some level of existence. I have deep programming still that to live the “right way” you must “be productive” – which of course means validated for being productive. Even though I see this pattern, I can’t get it to shut up. It’s still there (deep in my default mode network (DFN)). And once I make a choice of something to do, some goal, it immediately then moves on to protect that goal from anything that could prevent it.

But I no longer need to plan for every contingency. I can wait for reality to unfold (the Game to unfold) and make new choices and adjustments (Play) as things unfold.

When we first played Super Mario Brothers as a kid, we didn’t plan and strategize about beating the boss until we GOT to the boss. We didn’t know what to expect, so we couldn’t even if we wanted to.

NOW, because we CAN, we feel like we SHOULD. but that’s because it paid off royally when we were young/twenties and lacking life (Game) experience.

But those Rules no longer apply. They were rules for THEN, not now. The payoff no longer exceeds the cost (chronic stress). NOW we have (enough) (oodles actually) experience to learn to TRUST that we’ll figure it out.

Step by step.

Decision by decision.

As actual-reality unfolds. Instead of a thousand what-ifs.

TRUST that we’ll figure it out. We’ll keep Playing. And that our baseline way of showing up in the world is *more than* adequate, as it’s been trained to be. We can let down our guard, we are more than capable, and we don’t need to ‘try so hard’ to ‘make things happen’.

After all, it’s just a Game. Failure is not what we labeled it to be. We seem to be here to learn, grow, and challenge ourselves. Or at least that’s my current best guess… We can’t do that if we keep ourselves locked in a safe little box. It’s just a Game. And deep down we KNOW that these things that we let stress us, that feel so important, aren’t. They’re just the Game. We get keenly reminded of that when we lose a love one — none of the things that felt important feel remotely important any more. We see things clearly. Using the 80/20 rule, which I keep finding to feel true, I’d say 80% of the things that I treat as ‘important’ are actually in the noise. And ‘failure’ isn’t a thing that says something about me ( other than that I challenge my boundaries I suppose). Ironically, I found that realizing that most things that I stress about ‘don’t really matter’ is very freeing. It takes the pressure off to realize it is Game. It is all a Game. Society tells us to be productive. My childhood DEFINITELY told me to be productive.

But what I’ve found so far, in the last five years of really living a different type of life (one surprisingly filled with art and music), is that living in flow feels more satisfying somehow. Even if I don’t have ‘proof’ of it like we do when we are ‘being productive’. Being in flow allows life to unfold in ways that have surprised me, and that feels like ‘living’ to me.

So I’m going to keep going. Keep Playing. And resist the pattern to ‘try to be productive’ or purposeful. Because it is safe to do so, and it feels good. I’ve been trying my whole life to ‘be happy’, but happiness is hard to define. I think its different for everyone maybe. But I’m starting to sense that happiness, or what I thought that meant, is more like peace. Happiness actually IS our natural state that we drop into when we stop getting in the way of it. It’s there, available. When we stop throwing down boulders in the path of it. To just RELAX, and be, rather than to (appear to) “be productive”. That just being in our bodies (proprioceptively), open to our senses, and creating is all I seem to need in order to experience joy. Enoughness.

Now if only i could just *stay* there longer without having to try so hard, we’d be in business 😉 …