Unpolished Gold

Unpolished Gold

Do Less…..Be more…..

Really. I mean it.

Do less.

We do so much. So much more than we need to do. We do a lot to make things look perfect. Polished. edited. Complete. Why? Why do we insist on putting things in perfect packages and boxes and presentations?

The internet makes this more incentivized, more alluring, with the beautiful edited polished websites that present a persona, a package that is not human, not wild, not natural, not really real. Why do we (me included) insist on presenting a perfectly edited version of everything. Completeness? Is it because of the idea we have internalized of arriving somewhere? Does it help us feel that we have arrived somewhere when we finish something and it feels perfect. Packaged well? Then what? We set off again to create another perfectly polished package.

I watch nature. She doesn’t create perfect polished edited packages. A tree does not edit itself. It does not say, oops I didn’t really want a branch there, delete, undo, let’s try that again. A tree grows its branches in response to all the elements within and without influencing it and it just keeps growing and changing until it dies. Never edited, never perfect, never packaged. And yet, it is so so beautiful. The redwood outside my window is so beautiful and majestic and powerful and she has such a strong presence. What if we lived our lives unedited. Unpolished.

If we did we could do a lot less. I watch my dog. He doesnt’ do much. He does do some things like chase skunks, squirrels, play with his stuffed soccer ball, and then he just rests and stays close to me and Evan. I believe we can do this to. If we weren’t so insistent on polishing everything and making it perfect we could do less and be more. I think if we did that we would have more love, more peace, more ease, and more joy. I do not feel pollyanna about this. I believe this.

Try it out today. Try asking yourself if you really need to be doing what you are doing. Try out pausing and meditating in the middle of your day. I just did and it inspired me to write. To write this completely unedited post. It feels so good.

Be in the silence and discover what arises from there.

When I was meditating at the close this poem was shared

Sharing Silence

“Within each of us there is a silence
—a silence as vast as a universe.
We are afraid of it…and we long for it.
When we experience that silence, we remember
who we are: creatures of the stars, created
from the cooling of this planet, created
from dust and gas, created
from the elements, created
from time and space…created
from silence.
In our present culture,
silence is something like an endangered species…
an endangered fundamental.
The experience of silence is now so rare
that we must cultivate it and treasure it.
This is especially true for shared silence.
Sharing silence is, in fact, a political act.
When we can stand aside from the usual and
perceive the fundamental, change begins to happen.
Our lives align with deeper values
and the lives of others are touched and influenced.
Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses,
to our selves. It locates us. Without that return
we can go so far away from our true natures
that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves.
We live blindly and act thoughtlessly.
We endanger the delicate balance which sustains
our lives, our communities, and our planet.
Each of us can make a difference.
Politicians and visionaries will not return us
to the sacredness of life.
That will be done by ordinary men and women
who together or alone can say,
“Remember to breathe, remember to feel,
remember to care,
let us do this for our children and ourselves
and our children’s children.
Let us practice for life’s sake.”

- by Gunilla Norris

Do Less….Be More….