Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity. Ours is a culture that measures our worth as human beings by our efficiency, our earnings, our ability to perform this or that. The cult of productivity has its place, but worshipping at its altar daily robs us of the very capacity for joy and wonder that makes life worth living.
Interpretation
Being present in the moment is more valuable than simply being productive.
Maria Popova's quote emphasizes the importance of presence over mere productivity in our lives. It critiques a culture that equates human worth with efficiency and output, suggesting that this obsession with productivity can detract from our ability to experience joy and wonder in life, which are essential for a fulfilling existence.
In practice
During a mindfulness workshop, when discussing the importance of living in the moment.
Our chronic discomfort with ambiguity - which, ironically, is critical to both our creativity and the richness of our lives - leads us to lock down safe, comfortable, familiar interpretations, even if they are only partial representations of or fully disconnected from reality.
Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity.
We judge a horse not only by its pace on a racecourse, but also by its walk, nay, when resting in its stable.
You have to find out who you are aside from what the media say you are. If you've become reliant on them for kind of a sense of self, then you're really screwed.
So you know how things stand. Now forget what they think of you. Be satisfied if you can live the rest of your life, however short, as your nature demands. Focus on that, and don't let anything distract you. You've wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere.
I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption and think it long of coming. Literally no man has more wholly outlived life than I. And still it's good fun.
Submitting to censorship is to enter the seductive world of 'The Giver': the world where there are no bad words and no bad deeds. But it is also the world where choice has been taken away and reality distorted. And that is the most dangerous world of all.
Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.
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