“For he lived in wait of something that he assumed was to come his way, and gave himself up to dreaming and “seeing” far more than to functioning in life. The sense he had that something particularly fine was about to happen remained with him throughout his life something which would solve all his problems and make his life simple and clear.
He “saw” this and waited . .. Thus, everything he did in life was merely “temporary,” what he had to do until the expected would finally come to pass.”
– A. R. Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist
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“Most people never think about running out of time. They look ahead and see days and months and years of empty dates on the calendar, and assume they have plenty of time to fill them… We allow time to dictate so many of our decisions. How long will it take? When is it due? How much time should I put in? It’s late, I need to stop. What time does this end? Stop managing time, and start managing your focus.”
– Tim S. Grover, Winning
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Reading the Luria quote made my legs feel weak.
I recognised the pathology of his patient.
A life spent waiting.
An imaginary opportunity, unearned but expected.
But things don’t just happen, they emerge as the result of doing.
They require focus.
A deliberate intention followed swiftly by action.
Not everything works out.
Then you do something else.
I wish I could write from experience.
I have gotten pretty good at doing nothing.
It takes a lot of effort to start something new.
Rather than focus on a distant goal to get me moving, I figure out a system that I can sustain indefinitely.
I am not interested in intermittent rewards. I want things to last forever.
Pretty ambitious.
But by focusing on creating systems that I can sustain and be rewarded by for a lifetime, I engage in my life every day.
Read, Write, Walk.
These quotes remind me I don’t have a lot of time: every day counts.
I am choosing to count my days with posts about quotes.
Conversations With Quotations 