Michael Nobbs on giving up

Daucus carota, Queen Anne's lace, wild carrot

Another image is posted in texture.

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Recently I downloaded Sharpreader, which allows me to handle RSS feeds. This has opened up the world of blogs outside LiveJournal. It gives me an easy way to check on my old friend Will Brady, but I've started reading others as well. My favourite new one so far is Michael Nobbs, who I discovered through a recent LJ friend, kyana. It is subtitled, "Learning to do less." One recent entry was titled, "On giving up." I prefer to call it letting go.

I don't need to do less, but to discover the level of doing at which I feel competent, and which is sustainable. I used to always work in a frenzy then burn out, doing nothing again until deadlines forced me to go crazy once more. I never learned to pace myself. I went to time management seminars and learned valuable strategies for using pencils and paper to make life maps I could follow. But the tactics never sunk to the level of my deep values. I was merely parceling my life into portions to feed the lions.

Now I'm working form a level of poverty. Energy and concentration come in fits and starts, and I'm learning how to nurture them. I wonder whether I'll ever have enough to accomplish anything I dreamed of.

The things I dreamed of. That's what it all comes down to: unrealistic expectations. When I was young, nothing short of absolute fame, fortune and happiness would satisfy me. In the game of Life I always wanted 60 of everything. Why did I have to divide it up? But when a decision was called for, I mostly wanted happiness.

Life doesn't serve dreams on platters for most of us. But disappointment comes not from having little, rather from wanting too much.

Giving up, letting go, does not equal despair or cowardice. It's hard to admit some of the things I expected from life—and the security the promised me—are not achievable.

When I look honestly at my life now I have many sources of happiness. I'm working on being grateful for them, rather than worrying about what I don't have. And on strengthening who I am rather than striving to be vastly different. Fostering simple, steady activity rather than tides and surges. And looking to take pleasure in the small, necessary tasks to avoid distraction by unhappiness.

This brings me closer to the simplicity and peacefulness I value. But even as I write about these choices, they shimmer with uncertainty.

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Let me be full of kindness and love.
Let me be well.
Let me be peaceful and at ease.
Let me be happy.