when is an epitaph not an epitaph?
Last week I watched a really really really l o n g form YT video about productivity. Apparently this is better for increasing attention span and productivity than short form...
I watched to the end because I thought the content might expand the way life lives me. [Generally, here, trusting life to unroll itself, including some loose priorities for the period between each new and full moon seems to create an enriching mix of scheduled stuff and surprise.] I also found the interviewee vivacious, accessible and engaging.
I'm pretty confident most bear and bubbles bloggers would find much of the advice familiar and packaged originally: think 'Getting Things Done', Steven Bartlett's 1% 'small steps' maxim and James Clear's writings. If you want a link, e-mail me.
It was entertaining and then engrossing... I'm grateful for the experience but for all the wrong reasons! [Second post to follow with practical example.]
Half-way through and the assumption that I wasn't productive enough had lodged itself enough for me to take up the idea offered of writing my epitaph. This would focus me to do MUCH MORE!
Words flew in. The now ditched (spoiler) epitaph reads very much like a list of how humans might remember me IF I achieved my 'goals'. It was like a 'to do' list of Very Big Items all of which confirmed I am Not There Yet... Is this meant to prompt me to be more productive?
I went to bed feeling something was definitely 'off'.
As I fell asleep and on waking, having asked what was missing in said epitaph and the strategies I'd absorbed, I heard these two phrases repeatedly:
Listen and 'Feed the Birds' [as in my favourite track from The Sound of Music]
Ah... my first epitaph was entirely about outputs and entirely humancentric.
It prompted writing a second epitaph which will/cannot ever be read (except here) from 'The non-human smalls, bigs and so called inanimate - and may be one or two humans too':
She loved, fed, watered, talked and nourished but more than all that, she listened and received us and shared our stories.
Nothing to show. But this one makes me glow inside. It's alive now, not one day. And may be listening and feeding the birds will include completing the lofty goals in the first epitaph, but it's no longer about productivity. It's a verbing not an output driven intending - no less challenging but riven with possibility and scope.
#death #productivity #now #inclusive