Sidewalk Tiles

   After today's meditation session, I was reminded of something from a cassette of a talk I had heard from Alan Watts, so many years ago. This cassette was something I had found in a library sale sometime around 1992 or 1993. I have no idea where that cassette might have landed at this point, but what I can remember is that it talked about how each moment is like the tile of a sidewalk. Either  a person can feel overwhelmed about all the tiles she or he needs to traverse before a journey is completed, or can note that there is really only one tile to traverse in one instant of time. If I recall, Watts had used a similar analogy when describing a simple act such as doing the dishes. What interested me about Watts view is how it creates a metaphor for understanding why a person can get overwhelmed in the first place, and its relationship to the sense of time.
    When there is a thought of so many things to do, is that really 'many things to do' after all? It's easy to attach to that thought out of fear that something will fall out of 'my' responsibility. But what happens if I decide not to take on everything at all? What happens if I entertain the possibility that something will either be done at a later time, or will get done through some other means? Does that make a person less responsible? There is an illusion embedded in this thought of being overwhelmed by too many things; namely, that there is a single person responsible for 'all these things'. In fact, I wonder if this is ever really the case after all.
     To put it in a different framework, what becomes of what 'doesn't happen right now?' I can think of many things.. The obvious answer is that it will get done in some future time by the person who fails to do  it now. Another possibility is that this thing never needs to be done, as it starts to lose priority in light of more pressing and comprehensive solutions. A third possibility is that there will be more hands and better equipment to do the work in some future time, should I fail to attend to it now. A fourth possibility is that someone else simply takes care of it. But my point is, in all these possibilities, is there a loss or a gain of self? Does the self stand to lose or to gain from failing to do all that needs to be done? And is there ever a point where I can prove to myself that  I have 'done enough', and 'that is that'?
     Of course, much needs to be done in life, because there is a whole universe of doing and relating. As long as there is a tangible and separate subject and object, there is a constant flurry of things to be patched, connected and reconnected. But the point of these questions is to suggest that perhaps there is no discrete and isolated self responsible for getting all this done in the end. Nothing ever gets done without the right amounts and degrees of cause and conditions. In that sense, there is never a single self that can engineer even the slightest of what has been assigned to do. Even a child's homework is not done in isolation by one person. It is done at least in part thanks to the cause and conditions that assist the child in completing the task: a good and quiet home environment, supportive teachers, clear instructions, a healthy political environment, a healthy physical body, sufficient amounts of rest, etc.
     I doubt that many people would explore this argument, since Western cultures at least seem taken with the notion of personal autonomy, and salvation through autonomy. But it is always interesting to explore what happens when these hard boundaries of self start to loosen a bit, when I challenge the notion of how much a single body can do, given the space and times under consideration. Contemplating the nature of what happens over time might ease the demands that people place upon themselves to conquer all the things assigned to them.