As I sat in meditation this morning, I felt an uncomfortable, familiar nudging. A dissatisfaction. An insufficiency. My thoughts flowed toward the attractive magnet of mind where I deposit the wreckage of goals unmet and visions partially fulfilled. This junkyard of declarations retains a distinctive attraction, you see. It is a private place known to none but me. I visit often enough.
Today I paused at the rickety gate. From there I can see the piles from my 30s, an especially productive period when I barely took a breath to ever inspect the detritus before hauling it here.
But I chose this time, just now, not to enter. In the orange-pink light of dawn I experienced a revelatory moment.
Productivity can be abusive.
I have long bought into the hype about a productive career. And like many I equated productivity in turn with a useful and worthy life. But as I peered over the wire fence, into the graveyard of my devotion to this cult, the sun peeked over the horizon to reveal in a narrow moment a kinder truth.
A life ruled by productivity redirects raw materials away from growth and beauty. I have expended much valuable breath in mechanized pursuit of greater and greater measurements. But rarely did I exhale wholly, and linger in the space of quiet, empty release, allowing for what was to be, and to become. Allowing for right now. Just and only that.
Leaving behind the heaping art of insufficiencies, I step off the paved road, down a narrow and uneven path into the wooded hills.