For while the tired waves, vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
I was hoping that the large COVID response in this country at the start of it all would finally get people to breathe, slow, and all that you mention. For a while , around my location, you could see life almost returning to a more connected to life, life.
When things settled down, nothing much seemed to stick. The rat race restarted the grid is good to go, and the pace ever more frantic.
People can, will, do, and should do whatever it is that makes them live their fulfilled life, 100%.
I just hope they do it for themselves, not for others. Would be a shame.
...Reminds me of how I ruined my old wallet, hiking thirty miles on a foggy day in Algonquin Provincial Park.
Quoting from 'The Road Less Traveled' by M. Soctt Peck.[0]
Section on Problem-Solving and Time:
> At the age of thirty-seven I learned how to fix things. Prior to that time almost all my attempts to make minor plumbing repairs, mend toys or assemble boxed furniture according to the accompanying hieroglyphical instruction sheet ended in confusion, failure and frustration. Despite having managed to make it through medical school and support a family as a more or less successful executive and psychiatrist, I considered myself to be a mechanical idiot. I was convinced I was deficient in some gene, or by curse of nature lacking some mystical quality responsible for mechanical ability. Then one day at the end of my thirty-seventh year, while taking a spring Sunday walk, I happened upon a neighbor in the process of re-pairing a lawn mower. After greeting him I remarked, "Boy, I sure admire you. I've never been able to fix those kind of things or do anything like that." My neighbor, without a moment's hesitation, shot back, "That's because you don't take the time."...
> The issue is important, because many people simply do not take the time necessary to solve many of life's intellectual, social or spiritual problems, just as I did not take the time to solve mechanical problems...
> And this is precisely the way that so many of us approach other dilemmas of day-to-day living. Who among us can say that they unfailingly devote sufficient time to analyzing their children's problems or tensions within the family? Who among us is so self-disciplined that he or she never says resignedly in the face of family problems, "It's beyond me"?...
> Actually, there is a defect in the approach to problem-solving more primitive and more destructive than impatiently in-adequate attempts to find instant solutions, a defect even more ubiquitous and universal. It is the hope that problems will go away of their own accord.
>Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_Road_Less_Tr...
> As to progress -- we don’t know how much progress we made, actually, but if you practice it you will realize -- some day you will realize that our progress is not -- it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, you cannot actually make progress. The progress you make is always little by little. It is like -- to go through fog. You don’t know when you get wet, but if you just walk through fog you will be wet, little by little, even though you don’t know -- it is not like a shower.
> When you go out when it is showering you will feel, ‘Oh, that’s terrible!”. It is not so bad but when you get wet by fog it is very difficult to dry yourself. This is how we make progress. So actually there is not need to worry about your progress. Just to do it is the way. It is, maybe, like to study language. Just repeating, you will master it. You cannot do it all of a sudden. This is how we practice, especially Soto way, is to do it little by little. To make progress little by little. Or we do not even mind, we do not expect to make progress, just to do it is our way. The point is to do it with sincerity in each moment. That is the point. There should not be Nirvana besides our practice.
Source: https://www.shunryusuzuki.com/detail1?ID=80