Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Doing a "whole-op"

Sometimes late at night I do a "whole-op". It's my loose translation of a Danish term from the car restoration trade, of when a car is renovated from top to bottom and inside-out.
I've twisted the term to mean when you take some time out to look over your life as a whole, to evaluate how it's going. Especially looking at it from the biggest perspective you can muster, that's important since we all tend to get lost in the details, in daily life.

Try to really take nothing for granted, but what is your purpose? What's your most important purpose? Are you making progress? Are you in the right place for furthering that purpose? Is it the right one, or is it one you've been given? Is there a higher one which could be more important?

I think doing this once in a while is essential, and might prevent that one wakes up at 60 and finds that one has used a lifetime doing something that (s)he now considers trivial, or has not grown so much as one might have, for lack of attention to it.

3 comments:

Alex said...

Ah, my reason is to bring up two kids. That includes being a very present parent and the bread-winner.

Beyond propagation of the species I am also here as a herald. That is the sole purpose of a photographer, to open peoples eyes, that they may understand and love this planet more, or see where it is hurting and help fix it.

Rodion said...

Really valuable advice.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thank you very much.