ADOPT THE PACE OF NATURE…HER SECRET IS PATIENCE. ~RALPH WALDO EMERSON
My third lesson in creating a charmed life came recently when I was having yet another attack of worry. Worry that I didn’t yet have a plan, didn’t have it all figured out, didn’t have concrete goals. I wasn’t doing something…ANYTHING. Then I suddenly realized that I WAS doing something. I was doing something quite important that I’d been putting off for years. I was learning patience.
It’s been a very long time coming for me. I don’t do patience. I do activity. Activity just for the sake of activity, I now realize. I thought motion was always good. Motion meant I was on my way somewhere. Didn’t it? In this case it didn’t. It meant that I was so afraid of not going somewhere, that I was willing to go down unproductive roads. I was willing to spend valuable time on activities that weren’t valuable. I missed wonderful opportunities because I was involved in things that weren’t important. What a waste of time! I could have been having fun, and enjoying doing nothing for the very first time in my life, waiting for the answers that weren’t in my control to make happen. Instead, I wasted my days and nights being impatient and frantic. I’m a do-aholic, and I’m learning that it kills creativity. Ideas and creativity don’t come from holding on so tightly. They come when you’re mind is lively and free. Your mind can’t do both. It can’t worry, and be free at the same time. You must choose, and so I have.
I’ve decided to choose patience. To enjoy today for what it is. To take the answers that come, work hard and plan, if that is what today brings me. By the same token, if today brings me no answers, if it brings me only more questions, I’ll take that too. The new questions may play a role in answering the original questions, they may be things I hadn’t thought of and they may help to clarify the situation when the time is right. So I won’t worry. I’ll speak to mentors and friends, I’ll give myself time to think, and I’ll learn to enjoy the days with no answers as much as I enjoy the days when everything seems to fall into place. I’ll learn to enjoy all the days that make up the grand adventure called life.
To be continued…
Photo~Sheep grazing near Hadrian’s Wall
