In a crazy world of infinite opportunity and growing affluenza the risk is that the ‘quality of life’ goes down.
We are surrounded by so many personal and professional opportunities that sometimes it seems I go through stages of staggering from on event to the next without any opportunity to assimilate the things that have passed.
Last year I blogged about the amazing experiences I had at the Olympics but I had very little time to actually sit afterwards and appreciate what we had seen and done because we just moved onto the next thing.
In a round about way Bradley Wiggins covers this really well in his autobiography: My Time. On one hand he talks about the assimilation of training, much of the benefit of heavy training for athletes is lost if they can’t take time away to assimilate the training and let it soak into their bodies. I think the same thing is true of experiences. I think some of the wonderful experiences we have available to us don’t have the full effect on individuals that they could have because we don’t reflect on them enough and think about what we’ve seen.
Wiggins also covers this in his book because after he had won the Tour de France he had the opportunity to ring the bell at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, possibly one of the most significant things he had ever been asked to do in his life. When you read the story of this in his book he really has no idea of what’s going on. He is whisked from the team hotel by car, taken to the stadium and pushed onto the stage, told to watch a man nod his head and when this happens he rings the bell, comes off stage and 10 minutes later was back in his hotel.
While all around him at that time was one of the greatest shows on earth, he never saw it or had anything to do with it, he just rang a bell.
Quantity of life is all well and good and scheduling in an amazing experience every single weekend is a privilege indeed but there is no point if we can’t sit back and reflect and use the experiences we have had to change us and improve us.