This has got to be the number one way I waste the little time I have in life. If you were to do a really honest accounting, this might end up being a major time waster for you as well. I’m talking about this super short story posted by author Paulo Coelho: 10 second reading.
The man is given only five minutes, but this is a parable about the entirety of a typical human life. It only takes five minutes to demonstrate what most people spend their entire lives doing: trying to change others.
The angel of death doesn’t even need the power to take life; the power to take time and energy is sufficient. The Book of Destiny ends up being a really effective monkey trap to get people to lose consciousness of their own value, so they can feel nothing when they barter away their lives. The Book shows how people are perfectly capable of taking their own lives.
Think this story isn’t about you? Maybe. But first, see if you’re into any of these typical human attempts to change others:
- Working really hard to meet people’s expectations so they will change their opinion and appreciate, like, or love you.
- Getting angry or frustrated because people don’t meet your standards.
- Finding perfectly reasonable ways to explain why certain people or circumstances must change in order to please you, God, or some universal principle of rightness.
- (Fill in a thousand more ways you might react to unsatisfactory conditions.)
But on the other hand, what if the man in the story had done things differently? An alternate ending to the story could be:
As he was leafing through its pages, the man began searching for the point where he meets the angel of death. So strong was his fascination with meeting the moment he was already living, he flipped through all the apparent justice and injustice in other people’s lives, feeling none of it as worthy of consideration, and forgiveness naturally flowing from his heart with every turn of the page.
When he finally found the place in the book he was looking for, his time was up, and the angel closed the book. The man looked up, only to see a brighter angel who strangely resembled himself. It was the angel of life, and he said to the man, “You have no place in this book. You have no destiny. You are free to live, and death has no real meaning for you.”
And right there, the angel took the man’s soul.
I would gladly trade all the time I’ve spent focusing on other people and circumstances for just five minutes of really living in awareness of the present.
carpe diem and all that…
