Ground Rush

An amusing analogy compliments of the Globe & Mail and John Morton of the BBC.

"Parachutists call it ground rush. Apparently while you are falling through the sky and before you open your parachute, the perception is that you are dropping to the ground at a perfectly manageable speed. Yes, it's exhilarating, but there's plenty of time to take in the wonder of it all. But that's an illusion caused by a lack of visual cues. It's only when you drop below a certain height and suddenly become aware that the ground is rushing up to meet you that you realize how fast you have been falling all along. Maybe there is an analogy here for the way we experience time over the course of a human life."

Enough said.

Create Your Life

I like that idea. We create our day and it accumulates to be our life. Rather than spending the day, and therefore our life, reacting to the things that come our way. That is not to say that we cannot absorb into our creation, the things that come our way with potential to enhance our day. The idea is to avoid spending a day being pushed and pulled by other's agendas and lose sight of your own agenda.

I spent the day chasing after little dysfunctional details today. As the day comes to an end, I wonder about this wasted block of time and I know that there were a million other ways I could have spent the day. Sometimes it is necessary, as taking care of those annoying little details gets them out of the way. I prefer to do that all in one day. Plus they pay me to take care of those details!

You wake up in the morning to a blank slate. A 24 hour hour period to fill as you wish. If you don't create it, it will pass by anyway. Wonderful hours left unused and wasted. I have used up about 19,345 days of my life. That is an alarming number. :)

That said, if I live to be 90,I still have 13,500 days to fill with anything I want. That sounds exciting. It behooves me therefore, to waste a single day reacting to events.

Creating a day involves some meditative thought before you start. I wrote a previous blog about choosing to be happy. This involved some morning rituals that reset your happy meter to high to start off your day. The result is that when you do, your day tends towards happy for the next 24 hours. I was sceptical but it turns out to be true for me. So that is the start of creating your day.

Choose the main things that you would like to do that day that will make a day of your own choosing. Slot these in. As simple as a walk at midday or the creation of a fabulous dinner with friends. Remember that concept where if you fill a jar with small stones then there no longer exists room for the big rocks. If you put the big rocks in first, there still exists room for the small stones in between the rocks. The big rocks are the things that make your heart sing. Make sure you have room in your day for these.

13,500 days. Creating not Reacting. Requires a little forethought but anything is possible then. Cool thoughts to end the week.