The Time is Now

Heraclitus wrote, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” I've always thought this saying applied to knowledge. Depending on your circumstances, a book can be perfect or useless.

But I'm thinking of this saying in terms of life now. At different points in time, you're ready for different things. You might be ambitious and extroverted when you're young and introspective when you're older.

Because you have different goals at different times, there's no linear path. Your goals and aims in life will drift.

However, if you think your life follows a default path, you will try to follow it as quickly as possible. But as your path wanders, you're just going off course faster.

I use to feel the need to improve as a person. To be better at whatever I do. Let's not lie - I still do. But I've since realized that there's a time and place for everything. Trying to maximize your path may make an alternative path harder.

Your desires when you're younger are different than when you're older. And they may conflict. You can't base your decisions when you're younger on what your later desires will be. First, because whatever you think they will be will probably be wrong, and second, they will probably not lie in the same line. Preparing for what you think you might want in the future may contradict what you want to do now.

We need to listen to ourselves. I'm against doing an activity in order to recover from an activity. For example, the whole "work hard, play hard" mentality. If you need to have a massive release in order to recover from work, you're better off understanding why you feel the need to have this job in the first place.

Judge yourself less. You don't know who you are and you don't know what water you're in. Enjoy whatever you're doing now for its own sake.