Most times if feels good to be busy. When we are in the middle of it we complain. But days fly by. We feel important within all of the activity in our lives. We run here. Do this. Go there. We even remind ourselves about what we did not get to on this day.
Activity is rarely boring. Things are always happening. Weeks quickly turn into days. The end of the month is here again. So much to do and not enough time to do it in.
Activity is seductive and resembles a current in a river that empties into an ocean. Its strength attracts and overpowers us, tossing and turning our lives in so many directions and so many ways. When we reach our ocean, vast and large, we finally come to rest becoming part of a whole that is amorphous without definition.
Skill and energy are needed when being active. How to handle interruptions. How to get our work done in spite of no time. How to please our family and keep up with their schedules.
The current of activity overpowers us and blinds us to the simple fact that we are not in control of our lives. Activity is so powerful that it rarely allows us to notice any feedback as to where we are or how we are doing. The next thing calls us to move on. Quickly.
Sadly as the years go by, we lose our energy while gaining the perspective that we were wrong in believing that our activity and energy alone would get us to where we want to go.
What we thought was skill was simply acceptance of the turbulence in our lives. Managing as best we could each day.
The real skill, that is hard to develop, is narrowing our interests to better define our choices of things worth working over a lifetime to achieve.
Choosing what is important in our day to realize more of our more narrow (and better defined) interests. This is where the traction in our lives begins to appear. This is where we start to become more effective in seeing results that we seek.
Discipline, practice, new learning, chasing old habits, developing new ones, starts & stops, ups & downs…….they are all part of the process. They are just part of the beautiful thing we call life.