Less Planning, More Living

I confess I am a planner and plan most things. A Virgo Rising too, I can’t help it, and it is in my astrology. Yes, I want to blame a little bit on astrology.

Have the recent world events shown us where we could be going wrong? Is it our amnesia in this incarnation that we forget why we are here? Day after day, we press repeat.

Can we spend more time planning for the life we want to happen? Are we ready to meet the universe halfway and throw more caution to the wind?

Spend less time writing lists on our phones or screenshots of places to see and do? More getting out there and doing?

Would it be so bad if we loosened the reins of our life and spent more attention to the actual living part that we came here?

I know I could do with more living. More seeing, more connecting with nature. Rather than connecting my bum to my lounge and my eyes to the laptop or computer.

We listen to mediation music or chill-out music from Ibiza. Mindfulness music of the sounds of waves crashing the beach to help us escape and unwind.

We imagine that we are far away, anywhere but here, as we lay on our lounges or chairs.

I think about life’s responsibilities. Goals we want to achieve and to tick off our lists. I took out a mortgage a few years ago. I think for myself, the regret crept its way in before the first 12 months were over.

It is hard to admit, everything I do now is because of a mortgage. It keeps you tied to an invisible goal post. I have often said that I am not living. I am just working to keep my job and pay off my unit.

Depressing.

Maybe I yearn for more freedom than this world can give us. I buck at the system and the rules. But do it anyway, for one day to have something to retire.

All this makes me feel heavy with the weight of grown-up responsibilities.

What about now? About the next 12 months? about next week or the week after? We have commitments. Financial constraints, work, kids and pets, make it difficult to get away.

Life is making us tired, or so we tell ourselves.

What is making us feel so tired? Is it the energy of the world? Do we unconsciously feel deep within?

The weight of so many things in life are the anchors that keep us treading water.

We have been taught in school and life to plan for our future. It is installed as a program through all the generations before us. Those before us didn’t have time to live. They had to survive wars so they could live.

Society has become brainwashed with a broken record of surviving. Doing and being, the achieving and obtaining physical tokens to keep us happy.

Do they give us the joy we think they do?

All external chords of attainment to show off and more people-pleasing. To do better than the Jones who lives next door.

I know this isn’t everyone’s goal. Not everyone wants to show off or outdo. It’s the meaning behind it all that makes me feel sad and tired.

Society keeps pushing an outdated story because we haven’t learned to stand still and “just be”

Is it because we don’t know how to live?

We cant break the chains of surviving?

To live would mean to be in the moment? To be still even with the loud that whooshes around us at 100kms per minute. The hustle, the bustle of being here yesterday.

We have the FOMO. We have life regret when we don’t do anything but blame ourselves or circumstances.

A book of excuses we carry around with us. Not an album of memories that we don’t need to share on social media but accumulate in our souls for safekeeping.

I’ve been there. I do this too. No one stops me from getting out of my house to drive to the beach with my dog and enjoy the fresh air.

I get complacent. I get comfortable, way too comfortable.

There is no — woe is me. It is up to me to choose to live. Or, I could waste more time planning for a life one that is grey and melancholy.

I could paint my world in rainbows, fairy floss, and ride unicorns if I wanted to.

What will it have to take for a collective of souls to live? Do we have to be faced with the end of world dramas for us to wake up and live?

Is it time when we can put down our lists and planners?

Grab our sunglasses and take a walk outside and take a moment to live in whatever way that is significant for us?