Trying to improve yourself is like trying to lift yourself up into the air with your own boot straps.
Alan Watts
Most of us are on a self improvement kick. We have an urgent feeling that we must improve the "me" and ask, "Can I improve me, when the person who is going to do the improving is the person who needs to be improved?" Kind of an oxymoron.
Watts asks,
What if you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is nothing you can do to be better?
Well, then we would be doing nothing but watching as Life happens and as we react to its happenings. We will be watching Life and we will be watching these humans in Life.
If you do that...you, at least, give yourself a chance...You are freed from busy-bodiness and this need to improve everything...your nature will begin to take care of itself.
He reminds us:
The great things that you do are really just happenings.
All growth is fundamentally something that happens and it depends on two things, First, you must have the technical ability to express what happens; andsecond, you must get out of your own way.
We begin to simply watch, allowing Life to be Life and us in whatever stage of human development we are in, be what it is when we realise that doing something about your situation is not going to help you; not doing something about your situation is not going to help you...you are reduced to simply watching
All is well
Alan Watts/Official Alan Watts Org (October, 2025) Mind Over Mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHXisYGjvmM&t=3168s
No comments:
Post a Comment