How much are you holding back in life? How much are you waiting for something to be different before you can live fully? How much are you holding in reserve? How much are you expecting that at some future time, things will be different, to the point where you can really come alive, you can really wake up, you can really live the way that you’ve always wanted? How much is in reserve? I’ve been thinking about this idea, and it seems like something that it’s kind of automatic in the back of my mind.
You know, when I put it this way and think about it, maybe I can see, of course, it doesn’t make sense to really hold too much in reserve at all, because we don’t know how long we’re going to live, and we should live however is the best way to live, you know, why not right away? What are we waiting for? But it seems like somehow built into the way that I think is this idea that there’s some kind of a future that is awaiting me, and that certain things that are dormant now will wake up in this future time.
So I have this imaginary future that I keep imagining at some point it will come to life, and then I can be fully alive.
But now that I think of it, it seems like, well, I don’t even know exactly what this future is, and it seems like whatever is good about it, whenever is really something useful about it, I should somehow bring that into my life now and not wait for something to change, wait for some external change in fortune, some new influence, something new in my life.
I shouldn’t wait for anything to live fully now.
I mean, it seems obvious, but somewhere, I wonder if it comes from childhood.
This idea, you know, as a child, that oh, there’s “the way things will be when I grow up”.
“When I’m an adult, things will be a certain way.” And then here I am, well along as an adult, and that feeling has never fully gone away.
It seems to be the case with so many things that are formed in our childhood, that we sort of imagine an adult picture of what life will be like as an adult, but then the imagination continues, the childhood feeling continues and never abruptly, completely breaks off.
So there’s still this feeling of holding out for the future.
And maybe this is a feeling connected with being kind of unsatisfied, because it’s like I’m not living 100%.
I’m not putting 100% into each day, because I still have this kind of feeling of keeping a reserve, holding back on fully living until some kind of imaginary change comes.
So it seems to me like, now that I think of it this way and realize there is this kind of psychological reserve, there’s some kind of reserve deep in my mind, in my way of approaching life, this sense of holding back: it’s time to start digging into that.
Time to go into that and start pulling that out.
Whatever I’m holding back for, it doesn’t seem like a good idea to keep holding back.
Whatever I am waiting for, that I’m going to be a certain way once certain things change: I might as well go into that right now.
Start making the change right now, start living the way that I want to live, move myself towards that place of living that way, change myself into the person who lives that way.
Or maybe it’s not even change, maybe it’s just removing the distractions to being what I already am.
But we all, I think, have some kind of reserve that- and maybe there’s good reasons of, you know, security and safety for holding this reserve, but maybe, just like so many things that are about safety and security, it’s so easy to take them too far, to the point where we hold them back.
And maybe now it’s time to let that reserve go, throw open the vault, and let everything that’s hidden come out, and say “Now or never. Time to live.”
#holdingback #lifeinreserve #100percentlife