Can you let the river carry you a moment? Can you rest your paddle, your body and your soul? Can you trust in the universe to take you where you need to be, that the path and the pace it has laid out are taking you to somewhere you belong?
It truly is hard for me to be at rest. I don’t mean that in the sense of I can’t take a break. I’m actually comfortable not being in motion and doing little. What I’m not comfortable with is not progressing when I’m doing something. If I’m active, I have a need to achieve, to progress, to move. And there is a minimum pace of progress that I hold myself to or “it doesn’t count.”
But I was reminded today in a different context that there are many forms of achievement. That witnessing beauty is something wonderful and worthy of note. That even if you didn’t progress in a macro sense, you are always moving in all directions, forward and back, side to side. So the question again is one of focus. Will you choose to look at the steps forward or not?
As you read this I wonder:
Can you make it less about where you are on the river than the fact that you get to be on it?
Can you choose to see progress even when it may not be the dominant theme of the moment?
Can you believe that hands beyond yours are on the oars, on the tiller, manning the sails?
One of my biggest struggles is that I often have a narrow definition of achievement. This week, can you see more of the types of achievement that exist and allow that to give yourself the peace to effort a bit less?
