This is somewhat of a belated follow up post to my post last month on Rhythm and Routine.
I mentioned that my life long struggle has been to find the balance between contentment and dreaming.
How to hold both.
How to be present and enjoy what you have and where you currently are, while still striving to better yourself and achieve more.
This topic of thought has been even further at the forefront of my mind after reading this passage in A Journal of A Solitude by May Sarton :
“I asked myself the question, ‘What do you want of your life?’ and I realized with a start of recognition and terror, ‘Exactly what I have —but to be commensurate, to handle it all better.”
Later she writes:
“What is destructive is impatience, haste, expecting too much too fast.”
This has actually been one of my favorite books that I’ve read this year and it has provided a nearly never ending list of various deeper thought paths of exploration.
But in regards to this particular one, I had a brief conversation with a friend and they expanded on it with this thought:
”For me it comes down to the intent of the achievement. Is the ambition born of genuine personal desire for something or from external forces?”
A Bachelorette reference was even made… are you doing this for the “right reasons”…
(I suppose that reference will be lost on anyone who’s never watched that silly show… embarrassed to admit I have despite my fairly consistent aversion to television.)
So then, it is about an analyzation of the motives. The who/what/where/why of the motion pulling us in a direction other than exactly here.
Wanting another pair of brown leather boots for instance is possibly drawing you out of contentment in an unproductive and harmful way vs. being unsatisfied with the inconsistency of your writing practice (very base analogies that in no way apply to me… at all… whatsoever… )
What then are your reasons?
I’ve been asking myself that this week.