Life Moves Forward

Sometimes you have to be reminded of the things that you believe. I was reading Elona’s teachers-at-risk blog about advice for students on organizing. Elona suggests having students do something for two minutes. Just two minutes.

And I thought, “Man, sometimes I forget to do things in those two minutes in which they could most easily be done in!”

About a week ago, there were some cool comments to posts on this blog, and I got too tied up, and I didn’t answer those comments. And now life moves on. Life moves forward. I have gone back today and answered those comments briefly. But it feels like moving backwards to do it a week later: the cool folks who wrote back then don’t even know that I wrote today, saying “thanks for those comments” or “neat idea!”

Life moves forward. I need to address things at the time that they happen – in those two-minute increments. This is why sometimes when I get email, I will see it in my inbox and not read it. Because once I read it, one of two things happens – either I reply right away, or I put it off. And if I put it off, I might forget (because my brain thinks that I’ve already taken care of it! When I haven’t!) And forgetting replying to an email is terrible for me – terrible. That’s one of the worst things I could ever do.

So I create a shortcut for myself – no reading new mail unless I can answer it. (And gee-whiz, I’m not perfect at this!… but I aim strongly for this… immediate answers when I read the email.) Because doing can be easier than not doing.

Life moves forward. In 1986, NBC moved its peacock from facing left to facing right. Because the future in a timeline faces right. And NBC wanted to be positioned towards the future.

Just like George Vaillant says in his book Aging Well, “biology flows downhill.” Meaning that life moves forward.

This can be a hard concept. This can be an emptionally hard and painful idea. There is sometimes little joy in this idea. It can be hard because it makes people think about the uphillness.

And yet, there can be a lot of joy in it.
It’s the visual of a smiling baby: that’s the future.