An Extra Day
This week just gone by, I felt like I needed an extra day to get everything done. I was toying with the idea and wondered what such a day would be called. I settled on the rather boring name ‘Newday’, and decided it would come after Friday, and could mostly be part of the working week and occasionally be part of the weekend. I wondered who would support the introduction of Newday, which political parties would be for it, and how it would work with the calendar and the 365-day orbit the Earth has.
During one of the all too busy days at work that led me to think the above, I overheard a colleague on the phone say the phrase ‘well, we are where we are’. My instant thought was ‘try being where you are not’ and the absurdity caused a cheeky grin to spread across my face. Yet there was something deeper than casual humour in the bemusement. I like absurd humour and I often listen to the Hip Hop artist, Sage Francis, due to his comic approach, the variety of topics his raps cover, and the quality of the beats he puts them to. In one of his lesser-known tunes there’s a lyric which goes;
‘I’m on a retreat and I’m under the assumption
No matter where I go there I am’
I had always thought this related to a Confucian saying from the Analects, about being present in the moment. Having done some more reading (although admittedly nothing like as much as I would like to) it seems that what Confucius said was more like ‘wherever you go, go there with all your heart’. I like Confucius, he said many sensible things. So many sensible things, in fact, about governmental and personal morality, justice and correctness, that a whole legal and ethical system stemmed from his teachings.
Entwined Strands of Lives
Confucius was concerned with the political and societal order of his day but his lessons resonate through time. We are all somewhere at each present moment, and for most of us, our past intentions have had a strong role in leading us there. However, it is not just our own intentions that are at play in the world. There is the amassed force of all other human being’s intentions, the associated actions, repercussions and of course, elements of fate.
In this web of complex interdependence, that we all find our biographical lives embedded in, our individual paths are inextricably entwined. The present moment can be thought of like a cross-section through a thick rope woven of timelines. Our physical selves are grounded in the here and now, the cross-section, the reality of the present, but our minds are free to wander along the length of the rope.
Incremental Improvement
Day-to-day lives are full of repetitive actions and recurring events. Confucian scholars called these ‘commons and rituals’ and maintained that if individuals can get these right, and attend to them in earnest, then good things would follow in a sustainable manner. The consequence would be to benefit society as a whole.
In other words, through attending to seemingly small behaviours we can incrementally improve our own lives and our relations with others. Therefore, with enough individual action, the mass of societal forces will over time become more positive. Using the rope metaphor, by improving the quality of individual strands we strengthen the whole rope.
For my part, I am going to work on doing the little things in my daily life more mindfully. I may even return to a focus on effortless action. In time I’ll become more effective at specific tasks, and this will increase my efficiency so that Newday never needs to be implemented.