Inky Johnson calls it the process and if you’ve never heard Inky Johnson speak, I recommend you remedy your misfortunate ignorance as soon as you can.
He calls it the process, others call in practice, I call the in-between.
I love listening and watching athletes retire because they same the same thing, over and over again. Their words sound scripted because their sentiment is repeated often. On the surface it looks like a cliche, but it is not a cliche, because deep down, they really mean what they are saying. When they look back on their life and examine their career, they always come to the same conclusion. The trophies are great, the money is great, but what they anticipate really missing are the people. The players on the field of play and chatter and laughs in the dressing room. But what do they mean? How did they get to know someone?
They got to know them in the in-between.
They learned to respect them. Understand them. Admire them and sometimes restrained themselves from punching them, when they were chasing a dream and living their life in-between.
You have to come to love the in-between. You have to come to love the process.
Your goals and dreams are the reason to do something, but the value of the experience doesn’t come at the end, it won’t hide itself at the bottom or a trophy or on a paycheque. The value of doing anything is what we do while we have a chance to do it.
The key to happiness is to love and live in the in-between.
Everything that we are involved with in interconnected but we get very distracted and needlessly obsessed by shit that doesn’t matter.
Sometimes, even well meaning politicians become too obsessed with winning votes, to serve the people, that they forget why they chose to serve the people in the first place. Teachers, in the middle of their long career become preoccupied with the integrity and importance of the curriculum that they forget to see the human being continues to struggle right in front of them. Nurses sometimes forget they the person they come in contact with is not a disease or a broken body. Their patient is not a number. They are a grandfather, a grandmother, or a great great grand-daughter.
If you don’t want to forget. If you want to get the most out of each day than remember and fall in love with the in-between.
The way we use and see the calendar is a good example.
We label Monday to Friday as the working week, and we call Saturday and Sunday, the weekend. But why are we so obsessed to live life in sevens? Fives and twos. Seven, after seven, after seven.
Everything is in-between.
This weekend comes to an end and will be interrupted by the week, but that week, will also be interrupted by the next weekend, and the weekend by the week, and so on, and so on. Everything is just in-between. Our existence works on the in-between something.
Everything we do is always in the middle of something else. We are always in-between this, and we are always in-between that, so why put so much value on a fleeting outcome than the infinite process?
It’s a losing proposition.
A recipe for grumpiness and unhappiness
Always give winning your best shot, but never forget the process.
Love the in-between.
Live in the in-between.
Cover photo generously provided by photographer Clem Onojeghuo via unsplash.com
