Finding a Way to Distract Ourselves Has Become a Bad Habit

Sometimes I feel antsy for the future. Somehow the present doesn’t always feel like an okay place to be. I get so impatient as I work toward that elusive something… but what exactly is it that I’m working toward? Maybe happiness? Or freedom?

While waiting for the skytrain on my way home from work, I tossed my phone in my purse and looked up. In that moment, I realized that I was surrounded by craned necks. Everyone was purposefully distracting themselves.

I get it. Had it been any other day, I would have been craning my neck too. Commuting SUCKS, so of course the rational thing to do is to zone out. I don’t want to sit with my thoughts for 30 minutes either. I don’t want to feel “bored.” But what if we’re not just distracting ourselves from an unnecessarily long commute. What if we’re distracting ourselves from our lives. Finding a way to distract our mind while we wait for retirement, or whatever. Only then will we look up. Then we’ll live.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wait for retirement to live. I don’t want to distract myself from my life.

Greg (my boyfriend) told me about a hockey player, Rich Peverley, who actually died on the bench a couple of days ago. Well, his heart stopped beating, and then he was revived. But he did die for a moment. The insane thing is that when he returned to consciousness, the first thing he wanted to know was the score, and the second was if he could continue playing. What more proof do you need that this guy is doing what he loves.

Could I say that about my life? Could you? Maybe it’s time that we all looked up. Because we can’t distract ourselves from the “bad” without distracting ourselves from the good too.