The Reward Is This Moment
It seems like I have the same struggle, Mike.1 For most of my life, I’ve had no idea what my life would look like if it were really my own (and not dictated by the expectations placed upon me). I, too, have experimented with doing nothing—and yes, that is not the contradiction.2 My “little boy downstairs”3 goes “on strike” from time to time in response to the harsh “whipping myself forward.” During that period I get little to nothing done, and it does not resolve the issue. Discharge does.Here’s my current perspective for clienting: “There’s nothing wrong with me, there’s nothing I have to do (just interesting and rewarding concerns in present time), and enjoyment is the natural way a human being experiences existence.” I don’t mean enjoyment in the way capitalism defines pleasure, but I also don’t mean it in the way that my religious heritage (Protestant Congregational) defined it: as struggling in life for a reward after death. The reward is this moment. As my Regional4 Reference Person, Beth Edmonds, puts it, “All the way to heaven is heaven.”
South Paris, Maine, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-maildiscussion list for leaders of Jews
(Present Time 171, April 2013)
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