Life can be so complex, so busy, so hurried. So many roles, so many goals, so little time. What to do today, where to put my energy, how to prioritize? It’s Monday morning. Went to bed early, got up at 4:29 a.m. to find a way through the day, set the week off right, plan it all, push it all through.

There is a part of me that loves it, loves the hustle and bustle, the achievement, the interactions, the connecting, the thrill of the race, the challenge, the energy. It stirs my blood, floats my boat, gets my juices flowing, arouses my passion, stokes the fire within. And yet…

 

I have another side, the quiet side, the spiritual side, the contemplative scholar, the philosopher.

Both are me, just different sides to the same coin, different facets to the same diamond.

For my morning reading, my few minutes of reflection, I picked up a book by Wayne Dyer: “Change Your Thoughts, Change your Life.” In it I found this quote from the 37th Verse of Tao Te Ching (The Great Way), by Lao-tzu:

When life is simple,
pretenses fall away;
our essential natures shine through.

By not wanting, there is calm,
and the world will straighten itself out.
When there is silence
One finds the anchor of the universe within oneself.

It served to remind me that while I love the chase and I love the prize, the ultimate prize is to have the strength of character to walk away from the prize (particularly if the price becomes too
high), to have the wisdom–the personal power–to know that all we truly need we already have inside ourselves, and that if we are not truly anchored within we have no real anchor.

Balance! I always thought it was the most challenging of Scott Peck’s Four Tools of Discipline (“The Road Less Traveled”). But that is a whole other blog.