Don't Burn the Day Away

A favourite song of mine is "Pig" by Dave Matthews Band and a repetitive line throughout the song is "don't burn the day away". The graphic above seems to contain all of the words that appear in the song. The pig reference is about the greedy ego that is not content to simply enjoy life but always wants more. Part of the lyrics run as follows:

Is this not enough?
This blessed sip of life,
Is it not enough?
Staring down at the ground
Oh, then complain and pray for more from above,
You greedy little pig

Burning the day away of course means not living in the moment but instead allowing all of the ego's activities to be simply means to ends that never end. An activity as mundane as brushing my teeth is usually performed in a cloud of thoughts and with a clear end in sight, namely to finish cleaning my teeth so that I can get on with some other more important business. The action is mechanical and the grip on the toothbrush is far stronger than is needed. I am not present and so I clutch (rather than grasp) the toothbrush in case I lose my grip on it during my mental meanderings. This lack of conscious involvement in routine physical activities is partly what the Alexander Method, as developed by Fredrick Matthias Alexander, seeks to address. Lately I've been catching myself half-way through such mundane activities and concentrating fully on performing them without  attending to any thoughts that might intrude.

Maybe the reason life seems to pass by so quickly when we are older is because we are burning the days aways rather than relishing each one as it comes. It's easy to get caught up in this habit when you're teaching. The lessons become working days and then working weeks, terms, semesters and then finally years. Those years lead us ultimately to oblivion but the process can be slowed if we can "wash out this tired notion, that the best is yet to come" and learn that "there's much more than we see here" if we can only slow down enough to appreciate it.
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