"In the brokenness and chaos of our time, can we hope to live in a way that honors our longing for peace on earth? A contemplative path invites us to be fully open and present to what is, just as it is, in each moment. That is not easy. The instinct to look away from the violent and destructive is strong for us. The urge to flee, fight or freeze is wired deeply into our reptilian brains.
"We fear that when we look into the face of tragedy we will despair, yet, when we open our spiritual hearts and minds to what is, we find that the sacred is there, in the midst of sorrow and loss. It is a pure gift that we sometimes sense so clearly: we are lavishly loved as God’s creation.”
- Leah Rampy
"It is not enough to be busy," says Henry David Thoreau, "So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?" Everybody says they are
busy. Most people I know feel overwhelmed by the challenges and the pace of their lives. But there is something important going on under the surface of this issue of "busyness" that doesn't get enough attention.
Let's just admit it: it's ridiculously easy to fill our lives with fluff and distractions today, and in the process crowd out the things that matter
most. I believe that part of what makes life meaningful and fulfilling is engaging in some kind of important work that helps make the world a better place. This might be something we do for money, or it might be something we do on the side, as a volunteer.
Consider yourself blessed if your job is a way of providing significant help to others and positive change in
the world. But for many of us, that's a stretch. Our job enables us to make a living ... it's what we do outside of the job that helps us build a significant life. Our "side hustle," or volunteering, or art, or activism is our really important work, and our paid career supports that. We are our own patrons.
All this is well and good, except
for one thing: we are so busy and distracted that we lose our way, and fritter away the time and opportunities we have. Dorothea Brande wrote about this in the mid 20th century, in an essay entitled, "The Will to Fail." She talks about the various ways people sabotage themselves ... and there are a lot! But the one that captured my attention is this: we fill our lives so full of fluff and distractions that we don't have time to do the important
work.
"If we are not doing what we are best equipped to do, or doing well what we have undertaken as our personal contribution to the world’s work, at least by way of an earnestly followed avocation, there will be a core of unhappiness in our lives which will be more and more difficult to ignore as the years pass.
"The fritterers and players and the drudging workers are bent mainly on deceiving themselves, on filling every nook and cranny of their waking hours so that there is no spot where a suspicion of futility can leak through. And at night, of course, they are either still hard at play or too exhausted to consider realities.
"Yet such victims present a dreadful spectacle when once they are plainly seen—seen as insane misers, stuffing a senseless accumulation of trash, odds and ends of sensations, experiences, fads and enthusiasms, synthetic emotions, into the priceless coffer of their one irreplaceable lifetime. Whatever the ostensible purpose may be, it is plain that one motive is at work in all these cases: the
intention, often unconscious, to fill life so full of secondary activities or substitute activities that there will be no time in which to perform the best work of which one is capable.
