Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity. - David Whyte

SELF PORTRAIT

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

Feeling far away from what we want tells us one of two things about our work: that we are at the beginning or that we have forgotten where we were going.

The interesting dynamic about human happiness in the marriage to work is that we can glide down the road in the metaphorical Jaguar XK 150, having a completely miserable, blazing argument with our partner while the wind is blowing unheeded through our hair. I can also find myself in the aptly name Ford Focus, laughing my way into a marvelous excursion. But neither Ford Focus nor Jaguar can guarantee us a place in the kingdom of happiness. It is the one in the driver's set, setting the destination and the attitude for the journey of work and vocation, who seems to make up our real possibilities for satisfaction over time.

The difficult truth is that our kingdom does not have to be very big at all in order for us to do good work: what is difficult is simply starting the work and carrying on with it day after day. My work space can be a small corner of a table on a train or if we are really, really focused, a knee on which to balance a writing pad.