There’s a lot of talk around discipline I’ve never really been able to sync in with.
I think how you frame a thing matters and for me, a rhythm feels kinder and more forgiving.
It evolves with seasons and places and all the intricacies of the world around us. It moves to a melody we can’t see, but feel is right.
I find it rises and falls with gracious curves I am carried along by. It is forgiving when I miss a note.. or two or three.
When I hear discipline, I think of will power which I find to be finite. But a rhythm sings and calls the energy in me forward to the next intention.
There is delight in its fruit and I think that is what pulls me through whatever may be unpleasant and unfamiliar at first.
I trace back the first rhythm I built. I’d wake in such a fog every morning. I knew if I could pull myself through it, out the door and onto the porch, then the morning air would dissipate my daze. After awhile there was little hesitation. Now I can not live without my morning outside. I write to organize my thoughts and often find gold buried there.
It’s the reward we fail to emphasize through grimaced talk of self-discipline I dare say promising vain ideals of who we think we want to be in the world.
And I see we are tired.
Tired of being told what to do and then trying so hard to do it.
There is such love, being greeted by familiar steam of tea in the morning. Such resolve in finding all the right words for one’s internal world. Such strength in ideas being birthed.
Sometimes there are gifts in our honest practice. Sometimes we must stop and grieve and hope these rhythms carry us through. Maybe they do. Or maybe it is silent for a little while. And I think that should be okay too — to exist as a human without a growth oriented culture pushing us faster than we are able to keep up.
It is not someone else’s song we are living. It is our own.
You design the container holding your reality. You get to pick what you give your energy to. You decide the mug you love most, the spot where the wind move your soul just so, the book you pick up next, the people who share your precious time.
No one’s making you go to the gym or do that juice cleanse.
So don’t if you don’t want to.
You have my permission, for what it’s worth, to let go and let love guide your life.
