Quiet is Hard

It’s a quiet and beautiful Monday morning. It feels lovely to wake up, eat breakfast, start the day in the quiet. I’m relishing it except… what do I want to do with my day? Half a dozen options float to the top- from chores to business tasks to exercises I need to do. I’ve noticed that when the brain is moving at high speed, it’s hard to distinguish what’s a "priority," and everything competes for equal importance with apparently compelling reasons for each to win out.
This morning is quiet. The notions of urgency don’t percolate so high in my mind. Perhaps I’m not fully awake, but it feels pretty good. I don’t want the meanness of concern to start barking that I have to get this or that done right away, because that will spoil the peace, especially if it’s quiet outside, quiet around the house, no one is determining my course of action for me. It feels a funny balancing act, where I’m trying to keep gliding along and right on into action and activity- without waking the dogs of To Do.

Funny that the urgency has become some familiar to so many of us that it’s the only edge we know to get us going, the only traction we trust. While on a morning like this there may be something I’ve forgotten that I need to rush to do, I think for myself and for many of us, that’s not the issue- the issue is feeling a loss without the rush, without the need. We’re just not used to getting things done another way…

And please don’t get me started here on the idea that we’re "addicted to adrenaline," because for myself and many people I work with, this is not what we’re talking about at all. It’s only about finding the thing that points our efforts in a specific direction.