Intensity

Most of us are too tense. We have an agenda and a schedule and a goal with a deadline and we are driven, either from within ourselves or from others, to make things happen NOW.

A certain amount of stress is important as a motivating factor in our lives, but too much saps our energies and clutters our minds and fatigues our bodies. Probably more can get done if we can simply capture a bit of serenity in our lives. That peace of being is not an absence of action, but action with integrity, confidence and purpose. A knowledge that all that needs to get done will get done and that that which is not accomplished most likely doesn’t need to be. The world will not come to a screeching halt. The stars will not fall from the sky. The oceans won’t overflow their beeches.

I’ve often thought that the human race must seem, to God, like an ant colony seems to us. Everyone going about doing non-stop whatever it is they are doing and thinking that it all makes some kind of difference. But we know that all that ant industry is pretty fragile in the bigger scheme of things. Whatever it is they think they are doing is, in reality, inconsequential. Yet they go on, building, carrying, working, thinking they most certainly must be the center of the universe.

Relax. Do with integrity all that you do. Do it diligently and well. Work hard. But don’t stress out over deadlines and goals and perfection. It’s only an ant hill.