Free A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough by Wayne Muller Page A

wisdom, and wholeness? What if we were to pretend that, regardless our health or mood, our fortunes orcircumstance, we would remain quietly wise, accurate, and trustworthy in our judgments and actions? Even more, what if we could actually feel, sense, and know , with unshakable certainty, that wherever we went, into whatever company or situation we were called, we would carry with us always this capacity to move with confidence and trust into any situation? How would we think, act, choose? How would we respond differently to the world during such a day?

The Worrying of Days
    H ow many of us feel burdened with worry?
    We endlessly fret about how we are doing at work, about the state of our homes, finances, and health, about our families. We spend our days accomplishing what we can, striving to do more, and also, on our good days, hoping to make a difference, trying to make a meaningful contribution that will bring benefit, improvement, or beauty to our families, our communities, and our world. Yet we often finish our workday convinced we should have done more, we have never quite done enough, so we push to make more time, get more support, and mobilize more resources in order to get more done.
    In our deepest hearts, we hope to be good and useful at what we do, perhaps feel some pride in our accomplishments, and find satisfaction at the end of the day. But more likely our to-do list requires so many more hours than we will ever have in any day, we frequently feel defeated and discouraged by the time we surrender to day’s end, no matter how much progress we might have made, no matter what we may have done, created, built, healed, or made better.
    And by the time we arrive home, we are met with a host of new and different worries, challenges, and concerns. We worry about our relationships, our savings, our retirement, whetherwe will make the best use of our gifts and talents. We worry about our health: Have we done enough exercise, lost enough weight, changed this or that habit, made enough time to work out or meditate? We worry we are not doing enough for others; we worry we are not doing enough for ourselves.
    How many well-intentioned parents are always worrying they can never adequately provide for their children? Will their school be the right fit, caring for their spirits as well as their minds? Will their teachers be able to recognize them for who they really are or force them to conform to some ill-fitting box? At the same time, what if they are so unique they don’t fit in or won’t make friends or be popular? What if they become too popular and neglect their studies? Will their particular gifts and talents be supported and encouraged, without compromising the core educational basics they need to succeed in life?
    In the end, we can worry about anything. Whatever we choose, we worry we made the wrong choice. There are always too many things—even too many good things—all clamoring for our attention at precisely the same moment, and we are confused about which to do first. We keeping adding this and that to our endless to-do list, pushing things deeper and deeper down into the pile, until whatever gets pushed to the bottom of the list eventually explodes. Whenever something actually does explode, it seems to make our job easier; at least we can stop worrying which to work on first.
    There is just too much to do well, too much to care for, too many people to love well. We feel perpetually guilty and judge ourselves harshly, which pushes us to take on even more projects to justify our worth. So we, and everything in and around us, just keep going faster and faster. But we can never go fastenough. When we do go faster, things break. Then we spend precious time cleaning up messes we made because we were going too fast and couldn’t pay enough attention to what we were already doing.
    When we move in jagged and hurried ways, it becomes impossible to see, recognize, or drink deeply from any beauty, wonder, or grace in