I struggle with being me. Do you struggle with being you?
This weekend, my wife and I were able to get away to our ‘happy place’. A couple of hours away, high in the mountains, there is a valley with a few small towns. People go there for skiing, snowmobiling, boating, fishing and riding.
We go there for peace, a chance to be away from the demands of our day to day life and business, and to allow our souls a chance to slow down and balance.
As we basked in the early spring air over the weekend, and took the chance to just ‘be’ rather than ‘do’, I realized that I have become dependent upon stimulus to distract my soul rather than silence to calm it.
In the rush that is our daily lives, with so many competing priorities and needs, I have become uneasy with ‘just being’.
I struggle with feelings of not being enough, not achieving enough, not working hard enough, and especially not serving enough. I feel a growing responsibility to serve at a much higher level, and this work, these reflections, seems to be a part of that service.
But I feel that I have lost some of the balance that is so necessary for finding peace. I seek stimulus to avoid silence, that I may distract myself from the disquiet within. Slowing down feels ‘wrong’, and I realize that I need to find a better balance.
The further I step into my journey of service, I become more grounded in my belief that balance is one of the hardest principles to live, but the most important to get right.
So I struggle day to day with the maelstrom inside of me. Do you struggle with that?
When I feel overwhelmed, I try to focus on the good I can do in the world. I also try to examine the beliefs that create my feelings of discomfort, disquiet and sometimes despair.
The beliefs we carry, not necessarily religious but more existential, are some of the deepest causes of our unrest. A false belief, created at an emotional time and never examined, can continue to create great hardship and pain until it is unearthed, examined, broken through and put to rest.
I will write more about this tomorrow, in the hope that I might serve you better.
--Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings