All or Nothing

Something I've been thinking about a little while is the idea of compartmentalization. I think it's something that happens because we feel like we need to organize our lives. I don't think I exactly thought of it this way though. If you think of the idea of "big picture/little picture" thinkers then come to the idea of compartmentalization then maybe you get a little closer to what I'm thinking about. Hopefully this conveys my thoughts on the issue adequately, but of course, I doubt my communication abilities do my theories much justice, then again, perhaps there's not much to be had from such theorizing, regardless, I appreciate the time that you (the reader) take to peruse and consider what I have to say (write) and the attempt (however meager) made to understand my point.

We live a world where everything needs to have a time and place, everything is categorized, filed, and organized accordingly. If you go to a store, items are sorted by type and arranged accordingly, in a music store there is a guitar section, an acoustic section, a bass section, a live sound section, a keyboard section, a recording section, a miscellaneous items section, etc... in a supermarket there is the fresh produce section, canned goods, dairy, frozen foods, meat, juices, beverages, etc... Likewise, we've been encouraged to perform such organization with our lives, and to some extent it's helpful, we have work, school, recreational hobbies, family, friends, and various other things in our lives that we can make various categories for. We take each experience and then neatly file it away under a specific category in our lives. In some instances, things might fall under a couple of categories which might make things a little messier, but it's still manageable nonetheless.

The problem with this view is that life invariably is more than the sum of its parts, and there are things that call from us our entire being, not just a part. The "here and now"s of life require our everything, and if we're not all here, then invariably we miss out on something. Not to say that we ought not look at the future and plan what may be had, but we ought not be reserved or hesitant because of what "might be". When we start planning based on hypotheticals, then we start holding ourselves back, we miss out. Life will be that much sweeter if we learn to immerse ourselves in what we have now as opposed to what we might have in the future.

Maybe I'm being "irresponsible", but I think the fact of the matter is, that we live in the here and now. There's no point in fretting over something that hasn't happened yet, in fact something that might not even happen. I don't know what's going to happen, plans have changed for me several times, I've gotten it wrong enough times to know; I miss out of I hold back now. I feel like that I cheat myself of a lot if I don't. Hopefully this made sense to whoever is reading it. I hope.