The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new vistas but in having new eyes.
— Proust
A settled restlessness
A tightening surge rises from within,
Uncertainty, fearfully, remembering,
Breaks the imagined calm,
Too much, too fast, too soon,
Restlessness breaks in on every task.
Serenity is imagined from my soul’s mind,
Hopefully, trusting, relearning,
Reality is almost in sight,
Rest, slow down, wait,
A settling transforms whatever comes today.
(Chris Gribble)
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that turning up each day for work is a daily stressful event for many people. I know that there are some days where I feel that tightening inside. As a recovering workaholic, with a reasonably recent episode of burnout I sometimes still feel that anxious feeling rising inside.
I know that I have felt the restlessness that seeks to break in on my creativity. It starts when I begin flicking through emails rather than sticking to one task. Somedays when there’s a lot on I feel like the pace is starting to threaten me again and it breaks through the fragile calm. I move to restless activity that breaks in on everything creative that I attempt to do.
But, I have recently been reading Rachel Remen’s work on how to rediscover meaning in what we do. She points to three questions: What surprised me today? What touched my heart today? and, What inspired me today? This simple 15 minute daily task can bring amazing results in the lives of those who practice it regularly. I have been doing a, “Daily Examen” with similar set of questions.
In the second stanza of “A settled restlessness”, I wrote the words,“Rest, slow down, wait”. As I was choosing those words I felt that they were the antidote to, “Too much, too fast, too soon”. Serenity imagined, from that place deep within, changes the nature of my activity.
As Rachel Remen says, sometimes we need to change our way of seeing things to be able to grasp the meaning of our activity. Meaning is what brings satisfaction and fulfillment, the “settling that transforms whatever comes”.