To you, whoever you are
This is my missive to you, whoever you are. I’m calling in your support in an area of my life that I need guidance with – how’s this for vulnerable?
I would like to know how to do all that I want to do in life and not burn out, not exhaust myself, not end up with no time left for me.
What this would look like is I could say no to doing all I want to do because I don’t have time in my day to do all the things I would like to – and that is okay. It’s possible I will leave this earthly realm not having done all that I want to do, accomplish all that I want to accomplish, and create all that is inside of me.
We went around the room yesterday morning in our exercise class and named what our theme for the year would be. Mine, of course, is vulnerability. Others called out trust, love, appreciation, patience.
Not doing feels vulnerable to me.
Prioritizing myself feels vulnerable to me.
My schedule expands even though it is typed and printed and appears finite.
I’m asking for support to discern which sparks are for me.
I’m asking for clarity as to where to focus.
I’m open to new ways of looking at time, schedules, capacity, desire, validity, work, life balance.
Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, poet, social activist, and a mystic wrote in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1960):
There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom, which makes work fruitful.
