I am very, very lucky – despite hosts of administrative things happening this week, most have gone off well; most answers to e-mails today were yes, okay, done; and I don't leave for Zürich until Sunday.
Therefore there is some quiet time to finish reading some of the Jung I wanted to read before leaving; and there isn't a feeling of chaos, loss, uncertainty.
Somewhere among the waves of ideas and small events and actions, I can collect things into a sort of a pile: yesterday's snowbound meeting with students and friends to talk about life and AIDS; my colleagues waving cheerful good-byes today, asking for chocolate from Switzerland, but with everything else apparently fine and requiring nothing from me; a few chapters of Iain M. Bank's Matter, the latest Culture novel, wherein though stress and violence are in the forefront the background is filled with those strange people of the Culture, who can live casually and freely, without lack, for however long it takes until their lives make sense to them; and Groundhog Day plays on TV, its strange plot a reminder that taking advantage of one's time can lead to incredible things.
And among all those, and the snow outside, I hit a phrase in the middle of Jung's autobiography: sub specie aeternatis. By the standards of eternity, according to eternity, as though it is a piece of eternity, something like that. And Jung is speaking of making sense of his life, by those standards: and the phrase, the idea, seems to glow as it never has before – I want to remember to live as many days as I can, aware of where they, and I, stand in eternity....
Wake up! Pay attention.
And karma?
Posted by: Dave Robinson | February 14, 2009 at 06:41 PM