We all can pay homage to work.
Work is most often where we find the flow. Doesn’t matter if you’re stuffing envelopes or running a department. When it hits, you don’t want to be anywhere else. And hopefully, there are some people around to share that good feeling.
The beginning of an idea, sculpted by excited voices. The new challenges scaring you and thrilling you at the same time. The pinhole of light running through the center of a problem, calling you to the other side. The first of anything. The second success that validates the first. The end of it all, a flower opening up fully, its fruit exposed and getting noticed… The next idea, hidden in plain sight, waiting to be born…
Even the bad parts feed into the victory. That’s enough to get you through sometimes.
I don’t know the secret to finding the flow.
She comes about when she wants to, but I’ve learned that the one thing you have to be… is there — at work, doing what you’re doing, and nothing else.
It’s that single line of vision, total focus, acceptance, immersion. That’s the way to open the portal. Strangely, it’s less about what you’re doing than how you’re doing it. It helps to be doing something you love — its easier that way — but in the end, that’s irrelevant.
You can enter through any piece of work. As long as you’re all the way in.
I think we wish it weren’t this way. It seems to defy some cosmic rule of purpose. It seems to even the playing field when what we want is mountains to climb and valleys to skoff at. We want to earn our view. We want our choices strategically placed in front of us like a staircase.
But it’s even simpler than that.
You’re already holding a stone, and the texture, the smell, and the weight of the stone, if you’re really going to be honest with yourself, is more exhilarating than the view.