Meditations for Mortals: Day 10
This chapter is all about 'What is your current life task?'. Burkeman writes, "a life task is something yourlife is asking of you; so while it might coinceide with your parents' expectations, or your scienty's ideals, it also very easily might not." I don't feel very confident in my understanding of life tasks so I can neither definitively disagree with the concept nor embrace it.
It seems like a misappropriation of a sense of purpose or meaning in a task. How can my life ask anything of me? It's an experience, an amalgamation of moments, not some deciding force. Is it not enough to say that this feels important or significant to me and thus I choose to do it on my own accord instead of doing it to meet life's demands?
Again, I don't fully grasp what he means and thus may be missing the mark. What can I take from this chapter? There is a quotation that resonates with me:
"It is never the case that there's no next step to take. On some level, I think we always already know when we're hiding out in some domain of life, flinching from a challenge reality has placed before us. The purpose of a question like 'What's the life task here?' is just to haul that knowledge up into the daylight of consciousness, whe we can finally do something about it."
That makese sense. It encourages me to stop frequently and reflect on life instead of just staying still in a comfort zone. There's a step to take. Reflecting helps me see what it is.