The Quest for Uniformity
Similar to the desire for the perfect day, an ideal life can mean enforcing a rigid uniformity that does more harm than good.
Chasing utopian dreams never takes us exactly where we want to go, because ideas change, people change, and new technologies develop.
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Dictators from history had an ideal world in mind that would last. But their dreams were never realized, and instead left catastrophic destruction behind.
We are unable to plan a perfect life without also fully understanding the complexity of life. Things we think we want now might be different from what we want in the near future.
Life is always more out of our control than we would prefer it to be. Even with the most meticulous planning, the perfect day only shows up now and then.
If we were to have a perfect day every day, it would quickly become just another normal part of our experience. Then we would need a new fantasy to take its place.
We believe people have many needs and values that can come together in perfect harmony. We think, under the right conditions, education, technology and political systems, we can completely solve all our problems.
But we have to stop and consider these questions: What if our values and needs contradict each other? What, if we gain somewhere, we will lose somewhere else?
Obsessing over the idea of having a perfect life where you compress yourself into a focused point, means that you will suffer from tunnel-vision. Tunnel-vision means that you will miss much of life.
The perfect life is always around the corner, but the decent life is right here already if you can stop for long enough to see it.
Choosing one way of life means giving up many others. A desire for privacy is at odds with convenience tools like Google and Facebook. Long-term travel will mean being lonely at times.
It is not possible to combine a diversity of forms of life within a single person.
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You can reap the benefits if you practice meditation for half an hour a day over eight weeks.
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Before turning on your computer, sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide what you can realistically accomplish that will further your goals.
Take your calendar and schedule those things into time slots, placing the hardest and most important items at the beginning of the day.
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