Open up the settings on your phone right now and go to Screen Time.
Is that metric sobering? Surprising?
Do you feel frustrated today or inspired?
Would you make a pledge to your community to take the time you see dedicated to SCREEN TIME and use that towards volunteerism in your own little town? Would you dedicate that time to making the change you want to see within your own little corner of the world?
It is very easy to point a finger. To click like on a post you agree with or conversely to flame someone whom you’ve never met, never spoken with in person, never looked into their eyes and heard their story. We are all, to a certain degree, living in echo chambers of our own thoughts and viewpoints. We can choose what media to consume, who we befriend, where we travel. There is always the opportunity to pick a different avenue or talk to someone new. This is one of the things I like most about travel; there is an opportunity lying in wait to meet someone new and hear about their life- there are always similarities and common values when you really listen to each other.
I challenge you to harness the energy you feel today- positive or negative- into something actionable. Like the ripples in the water from a pebble tossed, you can change the energy around you for good, or for evil. Book a trip to a place you hadn’t considered before. Instead of scrolling on your phone while you are at the airport, LOOK AROUND! Maybe strike up a conversation with someone at the bar or in the line for coffee. This is a lost art that does not need to be lost. A kind interaction with a stranger could be the only kindness a person has known in a while. You don’t know what your positive energy could do- the butterfly effect it could have.
Apathy and rage are poison to your soul. You can actually make a difference to the lives of people around you. Don’t give up; get moving.
On Work
Then a ploughman said, Speak to us of Work.
And he answered, saying:
You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when the dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.
You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, “He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.”
But I say, not in sleep but in the overwakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.
Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.
Credit
From The Prophet (Knopf, 1923). This poem is in the public domain.
