A note on being present and staying in the conversation of life.

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Updated 8 years ago

#MotivationMonday

For all the hustlers, go-getters, parents, dreamers and drivers out there, balancing ambition and striving to be present can be a challenge -- It's something I'm constantly struggling with.

Author and poet, Mark Nepo reflects on his cancer journey and facing his own mortality in the 80s and being freed of 'the drive', and instead, drawn to the important things in his life like a river that picks up silt and carries it to the sea.

When he realized this, he says he woke up one morning and as though a switch had been flicked, he found joy in living and in creating. He was no longer creating to produce something - he was creating to stay in conversation with life. The trail of that conversation began to be his teacher.

Mark writes:

"A strong river makes a lot of noise because the banks are holding it and so it roars down through the gulley of the banks of the river bed. But when that river reaches the sea -- and all rivers reach the sea -- that current doesn't disappear; it goes deeper and continues to run strong. But because it's deeper, it doesn't make any noise and it joins with all the other water... "

On ambition, goals and dreams:

"I think that we have to have dreams in order to engage ourselves in life. But we hold onto our dreams and our goals and our ambitions too tightly as if that's where we're going. I think they are kindling for the fire of aliveness - dreams and goals and ambitions are what the heart and the soul use to bring us alive and it is that aliveness that matters."

On active meditation and integrated practice:

"We work toward dreams, and a lot of times our dreams don't come true. As long as we give our full heart and all of our work and effort to whatever we think we're working on, our dreams may not come true, but by being so devoted, WE may come true."

.....

Here's to being devoted, and not to the thing itself, but to the moments in-between and to the process, so that WE may come true!