jettisoning all yardsticks for growth

There's something special about the sun shining bright at 7 PM as I write this. There's still more of the day left, even if all one wishes to do with these remaining hours or minutes is stare at the bright white contrails blooming on the face of a true blue sky.

I received an email this morning from a new mother, which made me think of my early days as a new parent. Days of utter bliss mixed with wild worry terror. Days of great love and contentment laced with that nagging question beneath the surface, "Am I doing enough? Are we doing the right thing?"

Sadly, no answers were forthcoming, let alone affirmative, encouraging ones.

I read and listened to a lot of expert advice; many gave tips and suggestions, but there was really no answer to the question to which I needed an affirmative answer the most. "Am I really doing the best thing?"

All our life journeys are like this. Motherhood. Entrepreneurship. Writing, or the pursuit of any other art or skill. Our spiritual journeys.

Unlike institutionalized pursuits — like education and corporate jobs — there are no tests or grades that can tell us if we're on the right path or not. There are no measures whereby we can give ourselves a pat on the back and assure ourselves we're doing a good job, or constructive feedback that we can incorporate and improve.

There's no way to measure progress. In academic settings, our grades and the accolades we receive are clear indicators of 'progress'. At the workplace, we can reasonably expect to climb the corporate ladder, a rung every few years. We can look forward to an increase in salary every so often.

But in scenarios where such quantitative measures simply fail to apply, what do we do?

How do I know if experience is making me a better mother with each passing day? Who can tell me if I'm becoming a more conscious or spiritual person or not? How will I know if I'm getting better in the craft of writing? Sometimes when I look back at my earliest works, there's a freshness and raw openness in them that I feel is missing from my later pieces.

Perhaps growth was never meant to be measured in a linear form. Which is probably why we've had to come up with quantitative measures such as salary, wealth, bank balance, assets, title, status etc. to signify how 'far' we've come and force-fit our lives into these yardsticks.

Perhaps the true worth of our lives is immeasurable anyway.

Or perhaps we're looking for some kind of certainty. If I did this today, it would yield me a favourable result or outcome tomorrow.

If I do well at school, I'd (hopefully) get a good job. If I do well at work, I'd hopefully earn more and more money each year and climb the corporate ladder. If I work hard, I'll find success.

Well, the times have become so uncertain, these progressions that were once taken for granted no longer hold true.

This is why I'm loving the entire concept of living each day as a 24-hour mini-life more and more. Unburdened by the past. Unfettered by the future. Each day stands on its own.

How can we even seek to measure whether today was 'better' than yesterday or whether tomorrow will look 'brighter' than today? (In fact, we had two lovely, warm and sunny days in a row and tomorrow it's slated to become cold once more.)

It's true that if we didn't do certain things — like brush our teeth regularly, eat healthy foods, exercise regularly, nurture our relationships, connect with our children — adverse effects on our health and life would be more inevitable than otherwise.

But doing these things also does not guarantee a pain-free existence.

Yet, we do these things simply because this is the best we can do today.

And I think we owe ourselves that much — to simply try our best given our unique set of circumstances without expecting or demanding a future reward of any kind. Because the reward is already here — this utter privilege of being alive today.