Time

This place has been like a time vortex for the past week.  Hours and days just seem to slip by with no accounting for where they’ve gone.  There’s always something to do here – something to cook, something to prepare, something to clean up.  We spent all day yesterday preparing for the kids’ birthday party, and then Cara (my host) spent hours cleaning up afterward.

I’m driven, day in and day out, by a never-ending stream of tasks that need to be done.  Partially, it’s pleasant – work keeps you present moment-focused.  When it’s creative work, I kind of get lost in the activity, enter a state of flow, I suppose.  It’s a bit like meditation.  And it’s not all work – a fair number of hours have been spent out at the bonfire socializing.  On the other hand, it’s unpleasant, when you get a moment’s rest, to look at the clock or date and wonder where the time went – what about all those things you wanted to spend your time doing but didn’t, like working out, reading, writing, meditating, dancing?  Then there’s the matter of having to move on from here and needing time to think about and research and plan that…

All of this activity, this never-ending and ever-growing list of things to do, begins to feel like a distraction.  The constant noise of the children never gives you a moment’s peace in your mind.  And yet, work is “love made visible,” as Khalil Gibran describes it; and idle hands are the devil’s play thing; and children are a blessing.

Perhaps distraction from our pesky minds is where happiness is found.  I can’t say I haven’t been happy in my busyness this week.  I’ve been very happy…or content, at least.  I only grow distressed when I have to think about leaving – when I think about the fact that I have to leave in two weeks and I don’t know where I want to go yet and I need to spend some time figuring all that out.  Lamenting the passing of time and worrying about the future are distressing happiness-sucks.  Total absorption in – and acceptance of – the present moment is what brings peace.

So…what’s prevented that in the past?  What’s prevented me from totally accepting and becoming absorbed in the present moment?  From a purely work-oriented perspective, one huge element here is that I trust in Cara’s authority and in her motivations/purposes/ goals/objectives.  In business, there always seems to be a conflict between doing what’s right for the organization and doing what’s going to profit you personally, by hitting financial incentive targets, adding to your resume, giving you more power and therefore more prestige amongst your colleagues/friends/family, etc.  There’s none of that here.  Growing the farm is Cara’s objective and there’s really nothing personal for the volunteers to gain outside of contributing to that goal.  When business colleagues would pursue personal gain over organizational gain – which happened daily and which some could be counted to do exclusively – it was usually pretty transparent and I knew I couldn’t trust the “authorities” to be fair or objective in any of their decision-making.  I couldn’t just blindly attend to my objectives with present moment focus because doing so would leave me vulnerable to the exploits of my more self-serving colleagues and make me complicit in their deeds.

That’s never going to change, of course.  There will always be those – those I have to work with, those I have to work for, and (perhaps someday) those who work for me – who use their positions for personal gain at the expense of not only the organization but of their colleagues.  The question, then, is how does one find happiness, contentment, and peace in this environment?  How does one not worry about political intrigue and its effects on their life?  How does one stay present moment focused knowing their work – and perhaps their job – could easily be thrown away tomorrow by others jockeying for personal political gain?

How do you do it?

In more serious news, Gosia and I performed the Tranky Doo for the kids’ party yesterday.  I’ve never done the Tranky Doo before and I had to learn it for this party.  Check out the video here, but keep in mind we only worked on this routine for a week before performing it.

TL;DR:  You can’t stop the clock…but you can stop paying attention to it.