I was rewatching The Revenant today, mostly because sometimes you just need a little TOM HARDY.
But there was a line I had forgotten about. One of the fur trappers (the antagonist, and possibly my future husband, Tom) was grumbling about leaving the furs behind while they were being hunted down by a furious band of natives. The Captain turns to him and says, Which is more important; the furs or your life? To which he replies, What life? I ain’t got no life. Just a living.
WOW!
I actually paused the movie. Just sat there for a minute, staring at nothing. Because, honestly, how many people feel exactly that way? How many people have traded in their lives for the simple mechanics of staying afloat? Not thriving. Not blooming. Just… getting by. Punch the clock, pay the bills, keep the lights on. Rinse and repeat.
And, shockingly, that trapper wasn’t the exception. He wasn’t at all metaphorical. He was historical.
For most of human history, that was life. Survive the winter. Gather enough food. Try not to get killed by weather, disease, or whatever roving trouble happened to come through your village. Happiness wasn’t a goal; it was an accident. Peace was something you might have caught a glimpse of in the quiet between disasters; if you were lucky.
It’s only in this strange little window of post–World War II Western comfort (not even a century old) that “making a life” has been something average people could aspire to. Before that, it belonged to monks, mystics, and those rare few who had the luxury of not starving.
And yet here we are, in our temperature-controlled homes, with refrigerators and cars and supermarkets that stay open absurdly late, and somehow we’ve slipped right back into the trapper’s mindset: What life? I ain’t got no life. Just a living.
It’s wild how easily we forget to live.
We wake up every morning already behind. Behind on emails, behind on bills, behind on expectations we never actually agreed to. We sprint from one obligation to the next like something’s chasing us. And it is; but not a band of natives this time. Now it’s the grind, the roles we play as tiny cogs in a machine we didn’t build.
And sure, life is easier now than it was for our grandparents. We’ve got comforts they couldn’t even imagine. But if that’s true, then why do so many people still feel like they don’t have a life at all? Why is everyone so seemingly miserable; living lives of quiet desperation?
Maybe the monks were really onto something after all. Not the shaved heads or the stone monasteries (although the quiet does sound nice about now, and this hair of mine, really, bring out the razor), but the idea that life isn’t something that appears after you finish all your work. It’s what happens during and between the work if you let it. And, at this point, I think a zen koan would be appropriate (LOL):
A weary trapper came to the mountain hermit and said,
“I have no life; only a living.”
The hermit set down his bowl.
“Then show me this living,” he said.
The trapper held out his calloused hands.
“These hands trap fur, mend gear, and carry burdens. This is my living.”
The hermit shook his head.
“You’ve shown me your labor, not your living.”
The trapper frowned. “Then what is my life?”
The hermit pointed to the steam rising from his tea.
“To see this,” he said, “before it vanishes.”
The trapper looked, but the steam had already disappeared.
“I saw nothing,” he said.
The hermit smiled.
“Then begin there.”
Maybe making a life doesn’t take enlightenment. Maybe it just takes noticing. A small pause. A breath you actually feel all the way to your gut. A moment where you look around and think, “I’m here. I’m alive. And this counts.”
Maybe the trick is learning to make a life while making a living; not after, not someday, not when things calm down, but right in the middle of this messy living that we’re making. Right in the thick of it, where that trapper never thought to look.
Because if he could have seen anything beyond the furs (the sky, the cold, the miracle of still breathing) maybe he would’ve realized he did have a life after all.
And maybe, with a little practice, so do we.
Join us in making the world a better place. You’ll be glad that you did.
Cheers, friends.