One of the cool things about gratitude is that it’s a limitless supply. You’ll never run out of things to be grateful for. And you can’t say thank you enough.
Gratitude is also a practice. The more you do it, the more you’ll want to do it.
With that in mind…While I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again now and many times again in the future…thank YOU dear reader. Know that I am very grateful for your time reading this blog, your comments, your shares and your cares. Know that it’s all deeply meaningful to me.
“You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward…Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do.” –The Bhagavad Gita
When you find and engage in meaningful work, you won’t care about the fruits of your effort.
You will be far too busy and grateful that you get to do it.
“Which is worth more, Kind of Blue from Miles Davis, or the third Boston album? It depends on your taste. I hope we can agree, though, that the fact that Miles spent four days on his album and Tom spent eight years on his is irrelevant…Freelancers are close to their work, and it’s easy to tell ourselves that what we sell is our effort. That’s an error. There’s rarely a correlation between effort and value. Even if you charge by the hour, you’re not selling hours. You’re selling something clients can use. Clients will pay more for something useful than something that was difficult.” -Seth Godin
“It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn how to draw it in a few seconds.” -Paula Scher, world class designer on being paid $1.4 million for the Citibank logo
Nobody cares how hard you worked. Everyone works hard. Or at least thinks they do (See various “#thegrind” memes on social media). Hard work is almost a commodity.
What isn’t a commodity, what people do care about and what they will pay you well for, is the value you create for them.
The amount of time or hard work it took to create that value is irrelevant.
And I listen for the voice inside my head Nothin’, I’ll do this one myself -“State Of Love And Trust”, song by Pearl Jam
Giving up the search and realizing the cavalry isn’t coming is refreshing and empowering. You no longer seek external validation or to get picked. You no longer analyze what everything means. You no longer wonder if this is what you should be doing with your life.
You just decide making this piece art at this point in time is worth it and you’re gonna make it happen. If people wanna join you, cool. If they don’t wanna join you, also cool.
Go make it happen.
Be the cavalry.
And then when you’re done, maybe you can actually be the cavalry for someone else. (Because that person has also decided to be their own cavalry. But when you show up, they will be overjoyed to see you.)
“We should remember that even Nature’s inadvertence has its own charm, its own attractiveness. The way loaves of bread split open on top in the oven; the ridges are just by-products of the baking, and yet pleasing, somehow: they rouse our appetite without our knowing why. Or how ripe figs begin to burst. And olives on the point of falling: the shadow of decay gives them a peculiar beauty. Stalks of wheat bending under their own weight. The furrowed brow of the lion. Flecks of foam on the boar’s mouth. And other things. If you look at them in isolation there’s nothing beautiful about them, and yet by supplementing nature they enrich it and draw us in. And anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pleasure. Even what seems inadvertent. He’ll find the jaws of live animals as beautiful as painted ones or sculptures. He’ll look calmly at the distinct beauty of old age in men, women, and at the loveliness of children. And other things like that will call out to him constantly—things unnoticed by others. Things seen only by those at home with Nature and its works.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“And…and you know what, maybe I’m crazy. But when I walk through a forest that I saved, when I hear the sound of wind rustling in young trees, trees that I planted myself, I realize that I have my own little bit of control over the climate. And if after thousands of years one person is happier because of it, well then…I can’t tell you the feeling I get when I plant a birch tree and I see it grow up and sprout leaves, I…I mean, I fill up with pride, I…” -Astrov in Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (Annie Baker adaptation)
People enjoy their food, take pleasure in being with their families, spend weekends working in their gardens, delight in the doings of the neighborhood. And even though the next country is so close that people can hear its roosters crowing and its dogs barking, they are content to die of old age without ever having gone to see it. -excerpt from Tao Te Ching, Verse 80, by Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)
“It gets dark as I sit here, and the fireflies add wonderful effects to the flowerbeds. The birds of the air, the flowers of the field–was ever Solomon in all his glory arrayed as one of these?…There are so many of those brief moments of waiting in our lives. It is wonderful how sweet these notes are to the heart, though often while one is taking them down they seem like commonplaces. But when they are read over again, they have a distilled sweetness. It seems to be God speaking.” – Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage
The easier it is for you to be happy, the luckier you are.
I agree with Snoopy…Watching leaves fall from a tree is pretty awesome.
A poem for your weekend…
Aimless Love by Billy Collins
This morning as I walked along the lake shore, I fell in love with a wren and later in the day with a mouse the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
In the shadows of an autumn evening, I fell for a seamstress still at her machine in the tailor’s window, and later for a bowl of broth, steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.
This is the best kind of love, I thought, without recompense, without gifts, or unkind words, without suspicion, or silence on the telephone.
The love of the chestnut, the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.
No lust, no slam of the door— the love of the miniature orange tree, the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower, the highway that cuts across Florida.
No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor— just a twinge every now and then
for the wren who had built her nest on a low branch overhanging the water and for the dead mouse, still dressed in its light brown suit.
But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.
After I carried the mouse by the tail to a pile of leaves in the woods, I found myself standing at the bathroom sink gazing down affectionately at the soap,
so patient and soluble, so at home in its pale green soap dish. I could feel myself falling again as I felt its turning in my wet hands and caught the scent of lavender and stone.
P.S. – H/t to Susan Cain for the poem and inspiring this post.
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