Creating Value in Every Day Life

I attended an HQ Buddhist meeting on Sunday 8 October down in Cambridge. I volunteered to help out with serving tea and coffee and generally being around to help out.

The lectures were really insightful and so were the experiences shared by other members, but the greatest thing I came away with was how important it is to create value with our lives.

It occurred to me that so many of us, me included, have been sleeping through the greatest production of our lives - OUR LIVES. That practicing Nichiren Buddhism is as much about awakening true potential as it is in gaining enlightenment.

And don't we all bury a talent or neglect ourselves or hide what is beautiful about who we are? Sometimes we feel our true potential has been stolen from us by the harsh criticism from our parents, the guilt from church or the discouraging remarks from teachers. So we decide to live a half life. We are there, but we are not ALIVE. We stumble through our days like Zombies.

And I have been living much of my life, I realised, in this Zombie state. I get up, go to work, come home and use TV as my drug to numb myself to the pain of not living a full and authentic life. I exist. I breathe. I eat. But I am not fully alive.

And I think of my mother who lived her entire life in that Zombie state. How talented she was! But one by one, those gifts died inside her. Some were murdered by other people while she allowed others slip quietly away. She died long after her life had stopped.

She would be turning 64 on Friday had she lived.

And this has made me think about where I am and who I am and the state of my own life and how I live in denial of my gifts. I hide my true potential in case it offends others. I believe that other gifts were stolen. The truth is that it all lies within me still - sleeping. I do not want to be like my mother and sleepwalk my way through this life, only to die with my life unfulfilled.

And on Sunday, at the meeting, it became clear. I must create value with my life. EVERY DAY. Even on the hard days when it's difficult to even imagine getting up. It means being true to myself, listening to my intuition. Grabbing life by the balls.

Last night I was reminded of one of my own favourite sayings: Life is too short for bullshit.

It is indeed. And now is the time for me to start detoxing my life.