Reality Check

Last night I started reading a wonderful book called Moments In Between - The Art of the Quiet Mind by David Kundtz. One mini-essay was entitled Reality Check and I'd like to share it here as I found it helpful.

Reality Check

It will never rain roses: When we want to have more roses we must plant more trees. -George Eliot

Occasionally someone will say to me, "Just sitting and doing nothing seems to be running from the real world, hiding from what you don't want to face." My response is to reiterate that intentionally doing nothing is indeed the opposite of running and hiding. This is because it brings you face-to-face - even to the point of embracing-the most important and challenging aspects of human life, those based on your meanings and values.

As Eliot says, if you want roses, plant trees. What doing nothing can do is help you know what you really want - is it roses, or gladiolas, or redwoods, or none of those? - so you don't end up with a beautiful garden of what you didn't want.

The English novelist quoted above, George Eliot, speaks these words from personal experience. Born Mary Anne Evans into a male-dominated Victorian world, she led her rich and complex life successfully competing in the theological and literary worlds of her time. Her masculine pen name increased the power she needed in order to be all she wanted to be, not running and hiding, just embracing life as she saw it, in the era in which she saw it.

No waiting for a rain of roses for her.

End of quoted mini-essay.

As a passionate gardener, I liked the analogy to planting what you want to get. And I appreciate the concept that you need some down time, some quiet time, to decide what that is. This also goes back to an article I quoted from some time ago about being busy/lazy. That one rushes about in a dither, because one doesn't want the work of figuring out the exact path to take. I see myself in all of this and did take some time to do nothing, at least for five minutes today;-). Wishing you a productive do nothing session tonight. Best wishes always. Eileen