Jon Kabat-Zinn, in Wherever You Go There You Are, discusses how Buckminster Fuller contemplated suicide, decided not to, but from that point on decided to live his life as if he had died that night.
“Being dead, he wouldn’t have to worry about how things worked out any longer for himself personally and would be free to devote himself to living as a representative of the universe.” Fuller asked the following question throughout his life: what needs doing on this planet that I know something about, and that probably won’t happen unless I do it?
Fuller and his dome
He asked the question continuously and did what came to him to do. Jon says, “In this way he was working for the universe at large… it’s no longer personal. It’s just part of the totality of the universe expressing itself.”
I discovered this passage after writing the last post on right livelihood–it builds on the idea that what we choose for work, what we do with our lives is interconnected. We are creating a giant tapestry and it’s important to follow our thread with authenticity and persistence.
