Folks, I’ve got to tell you, there really is no finish line. Oh, there is goal accomplishment and task completion, all good and wonderful things. However, there is no such thing as final completion: all our lives we will remain ‘works in progress’. Yes, we can improve and grow, learn and develop; I am a huge advocate of being a lifelong learner… yet it is magical thinking to believe that at some point life will change in some fundamental way. As the Zen saying goes, “Before Enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After Enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”
And even if you successfully scale Maslow’s hierarchy and achieve self-transcendence or whatever, well, entropy sets in and there you go, back to work on yourself.
‘There is no finish line. There are only mile markers.’ Life is a constant process of becoming, we are all unfinished works of art, and it behooves us to keep painting until the end.
Closing Quotes:
“Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is.” – Erich Fromm, 1900-1980
“The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” – T.S. Eliot, 1888-1965
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier
Note: Every effort has been made to properly source any 3rd person material. I am, however, a voracious reader. If anyone finds any unattributed material, pls let me know asap and I will be delighted to give credit where credit is due.
“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832
