Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Be Here, Be Calm

Nature doesn’t hurry, yet everything is accomplished (Tao Te Ching).

Often I feel anxious.  I fear that I am running out of time, and I am incredibly stressed about it. As I experience this state, I often become restless and nothing in fact is accomplished at all.  Isn’t this ironic?  When we feel anxious and rush to accomplish something, all we ever do is to drive ourselves and other crazy in the process. Our health suffers, and so do our relationships with others.

What’s happening when we rush to finish something?  The truth is that anxiety about the future keeps us from experiencing the here and now. We work so hard on getting somewhere, that we skip the here and now, carried away by our expectations. We want to be the expert, the exquisite chef, the enlightened woman; we want to be "there", not here, forgetting that it is only countless moments spent in the here and now that can finally get us "there".

There is a reason we are not there yet.  We need to build up the foundation for the next step. Life has a plan. Nature doesn't hurry, but gets us there with the reliability and the drive of a freight train if we only let it. 

Just stop and smell the flowers, as they say. Get lost in the here and now, and discover how much fun it is to let nature run its course. Dive into what needs to get done and discover that life will get you "there" just when you are ready.

Enjoy the precious moment of now!

By Su Zhen

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