As you know – I think – I love to be inspired. Reading works by genuine people often fulfills that need of mine. David Whyte, poet, writer, and academic has written a book which I’ve found to be so satisfying. I wanted to share this particular passage with you, but encourage you to find and read this book.

I found The Three Marriages, Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship while on vacation and was mulling over that conversation I have so often with my peers and clients — how we ‘do’, ‘find’ or ‘create’ balance. Sometimes I think we just need to throw that idea out completely if we’re living fully in all areas of our lives — and at other times I see that there is just an ebb and flow of energy that helps us to be better at holding everything at one time than at another. Clearly, living at full tilt in all areas of our lives isn’t sustainable, so ‘balance’ is a constant repositioning of our priorities and perspectives — like it or not.  Don’t get me wrong, I do think we can find more, than less, satisfaction in all areas of our lives if we take time and care to know what we need and want in all of those important aspects of our lives.  Sometimes we really need to take seriously our need for change that will make all the difference we’re looking for.  Stop brushing away the thoughts and wishes and commit to ourselves that we are, actually, worth it and that the change we seek needs to be sought.

The ‘problem’ I’ve come up with of late is of really loving my work and also being present for all of the other people and responsibilities in my life. That’s where this particular passage resonates for me; I hope this stirs some recognition for you, or inspires you to continue to find this kind of love. Enjoy.

” Being smitten by a path, a direction, an intuited possibility, no matter the territory it crosses, we can feel in youth or at any threshold, as if life has found us at last. Beginning a courtship with a work, like beginning a courtship with a love, demands a fierce attention to understand what it is we belong to in the world. But to start the difficult path to what we want, we also have to be serious about what we want.
Following this path through increasing levels of seriousness, we reach a certain threshold where our freedom to choose seems to disappear and is replaced by an understanding that we were made for the world in a very particular way and this way of being is at bottom nonnegotiable. Like the mountain or the sky, it just is. It is as if we choose and choose until there is actually no choice at all.”