Urgency: All You Need Is Now
The second in a series of meditations on the Benefits of Collapse Acceptance.
Karen Perry’s Fifteen Benefits of Collapse Acceptance give us a vocabulary to talk about something that’s difficult to put into words. This series explores the Benefits, in intermittent dispatches from the den of the Feral Mystic.
You may regret the decisions you have made in your life, but it’s too late to change them now. You have to live with what you’ve done, whether you’ve done a lot or very little. You have to start from where you are, wherever that may be, and choose from among the paths that are available to you from this point, no other.
Get to it! You have agency; exercise it! You may be a brilliant star at the top of your field, or you may feel trapped, humiliated, and entombed within a life you never chose. Doesn’t matter! Everyone can do something, and the Universe is counting on you to do your part.
This is true whether it’s the end of the world or not. In good times, the Universe relies on each of us to see itself emerging in all its mind-blowing beauty. That’s how the Universe creates itself. When times are bad, like now, each of us absorbs an infinitesimal micro-crumb of the burden of the disaster. We each have our miniscule portion of grief that we must metabolize, first by feeling it and then by transforming it. This is how the Universe heals itself, and we each have our role to play.
Do not delay! There’s something special about Today™️: It’s the only place there is! The past and the future are signals in the wash of information that flows over us in the present, but our agency, our “free will,” only happens now. There will never be another time to make the decision we are called upon to make. The Universe and everyone in it are relying on us to participate. When we take responsibility, that is when we set the root of our participation. Grab it and do it, now!