We’re so obsessed with the climax in our culture that we forget that it’s all about the foreplay. So we live for the climax – only to discover two things.
1). Sometimes the climax just isn’t that good. Womp. Womp.
2). It’s never the answer.
Part of what being here and having this physical experience is about, is having wonderful desires that show up in the physical: a beautiful marriage, a Hollywood premiere, a house in the Hills, a lead on our own TV show.
But we get so consumed with going for these “Events” that we forget that most of our lives are made up of all the stuff in between the Events. So we end up wasting so much time waiting for what we think is our real life – when will our real life begin? – when it’s happening all the time. Actually more than all the time – it’s almost all of it.
We have to live the minutiae in between the Events as if they were the Events themselves!
Because they really are. If most of our lives are being spent there – how do we start to live our lives more in what we casually brain-drain dismiss as the mundane?
First, it’s not easy. When you’re standing in line at the grocery store in the 12-items-or-less-lane and the person in front of you has 50 items (!) and you’re reading the covers of those glossy magazines talking about other peoples’ exciting life “Events” and you think to yourself, “This can’t be my life Event here!” But it is.
It’s not easy when you get the call from your agent that you didn’t get the job. Again.
It’s not easy when you come home to find out your boyfriend has moved out.
But essentially all of these moments are Event moments they just aren’t being lived that way. But also, they lead us to other Event moments of our lives. Without them there is no future Event. If we can learn to appreciate them a little more – a few things happen.
We get happier. We stop living for the future. We become less stressed because we let go of control. We let things unfold naturally. We wake up. We stop taking things so seriously. We realize that getting “the stuff” is great but all the stuff we experience along the way is also joyful.
Then we begin to realize our entire life is the Event. Just as it is. Not necessarily as a lead-up to something else.
Student, Shailene Woodley taught me a lesson about this the other night at a Divergent screening the night before the film’s premiere. I said to her, “Oh my gosh Shai, I’m so excited for you!” And then thinking about the next night’s opening I screamed, “It’s all going to be so exciting for you!”
She looked me squarely in the eyes and laughed, “Tony, it already is exciting.”
Touché!
Every moment is the Event.