In the last twenty four hours I’ve had three encounters with the concept of evaluating work, leisure, and chilling out. I wanted to share them with you because lately I’ve been thinking about what it means to have a “microtopian ethos” where instead of working and striving for a larger utopian goal, you sit back to enjoy life in the “here and now” (as described in this article about Education As Art). So, here are the examples I have come across – The first is a quote by Throeau, the second comes from last night’s season finale of LOST, and the third was in an email about a person who teaches meditation and accidentally flipped someone off…

1. A quote my friend found:
The truly efficient labourer will not crowd his day with work, but saunter to the task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. – Henry David Thoreau

2. An example from the season finale of LOST last night:
An interesting thing happened on the season finale of Lost last night when Sawyer, Juliette, and Kate ran into their old friends Rose and Bernard. The younger group were on their way to stop Jack from blowing up a nuclear bomb buried on the island. Rose and Bernard offered the group some tea and showed them their house on the beach. When the group asked Rose and Bernard to help them stop Jack they shrugged it off and said that they were enjoying their life, they made a house for themselves and wanted to live slowly. They said something to the effect of “Even after travelling back in time 30 years you are still trying to find ways to shoot each other?” I believe Rose and Bernard have discovered that their obligations and sense of duty are self-imposed and/or societal constructs and that it’s important to reevaluate what you are doing and why. They were happy to sit back and allow the younger generation to learn their lesson; they no longer felt the need to choose sides, stop the bad guys, and save the world because it can become a futile and tiresome task. Maybe the better thing is to cultivate an atmosphere for friendship and togetherness and to enjoy the life you have.

3.A story I received in an email:
An interesting thing happened as I was arriving to teach class this past Sunday.  My car was parked right in front of the store and I was (street side), getting my things I needed out for class.  As I was doing so, someone drove past me and honked–obviously trying to tell me that somehow he thought I was in his way.  Without even thinking about it, my arm raised in the air and I gave the guy the finger–yes, the middle finger.  Perhaps, as I was raised outside of Chicago, or that I spent a few years living in NYC, this was just natural gut instinct, I’m not sure.  Just as soon as I noticed my middle finger pointing upwards towards my west bound assailant, I realized (as if I forgot) I was parked in front of the building that I was scheduled to teach a meditation class in just a few minutes.  Needless to say, I had a moment of embarrassment and doubt, asking myself what kind of person does this and then goes and teaches a meditation class?  And as I walked into the store, I just had to smile at the absurdity of the juxtaposition of events.

So, what is this leading to–a public confession?  Not exactly.  From my perspective, everything and everyone is our teacher.  What I realized through this event is that we are much more than the sum of our actions.  With that, it is not so much the things we do that hurt us, but rather the judgement we impose on ourselves.  When young children get punished for doing something wrong, maybe they cry for a bit, but then it’s over; completely forgotten and perhaps they learned not to do that again.  Kids have an incredible lucidness and resiliency to them. But as we get older, we err on the side of solidity and we have to tell ourselves the story of ‘what a bad person I was’ and then we tell that story over and over, again and again until it firmly sets in and we actually believe that it is true.  If I choose to, I could still be beating myself up over that unfortunate incident on the street.  But as soon as I walked into the store, I completely let it go.  In other words, I didn’t take it personally.  I wasn’t proud of it, but I didn’t mistake me for my action.

We make mistakes and we do things that don’t always reflect our highest selves–and sometimes we just embarrass ourselves.  But nothing could be more futile than beating ourselves up.  In this scenario, the incident was the lesson and the punishment–my karma was instantaneous….  If you touch the hot stove when your mother told you not to, it burns.  But if you keep telling yourself how you stupid you were for doing it, you just keep scalding the wound.