Where I am located, I sense a cultural impetus in our personal and professional life to be better and perhaps to be more. And there is much available to us for this pursuit of self-improvement of a kind which is observable and measurable.
I am curious by nature and love learning. For all the support I have for growth and development, I do stop and ask.
At what rate should self-improvement occur?
According to whose time? And to what end?
Should there be enough?
Do we need to pause from chasing the future?
What do the persistent evaluation of and judgment on our lives do to us?
Where is our felt sense of peace in all this? Is making peace (that is, being resolved and reconciled) with who we are now a necessary element to our contentment?
Is the pursuit of continuous improvement in opposition to being content?
Perhaps the issue is not in the pursuit, rather in what motivates or drives the pursuit. Why do you do what you do?
This poem speaks to a welcoming and acceptance of what is, now. Then perhaps what we set out to do will be done with peace.
Peace is This Moment Without Judgment
by Dorothy Hunt
Do you think peace requires an end to war?
Or tigers eating only vegetables?
Does peace require an absence from
your boss, your spouse, yourself?…
Do you think peace will come some other place than here?
Some other time than Now?
In some other heart than yours?
Peace is this moment without judgment.
That is all. This moment in the Heart-space
where everything that is is welcome.
Peace is this moment without thinking
that it should be some other way,
that you should feel some other thing,
that your life should unfold according to your plans.
Peace is this moment without judgment,
this moment in the heart-space where
everything that is is welcome.