A Poet's Journal: February 24th, 2015

 

February 24th, 2015

The question of effort always comes up.  Am I doing enough?  Am I doing it the right way?  Is this really how it should be?  It is easier to question than to do and even doing wrongly is most of the time better than doubting uselessly.  We often rely upon hesitancy to fulfill the effort required because we do not feel ourselves up to the task, or the time does not feel right.  Our projects and our plans gather strength the further they remain in the future; the closer they come to completion, the more apt they are to failure.  'Failure occurs near the end,' says Lao-Tzu because our effort has created something that was different from the beginning; we perceive the two differently so they must be acted upon differently.  Something the ancient poets used to speak of at the beginning of their poems, and even the Tibetan sages in their poems and prayers to theirs gurus, was a muse awakening, or the idea of something finding a bit of realization in something unknown.  Here the effort no longer has a beginning or an end, but has become internalized; it has been taken up as a lifestyle where the path is incredibly clear, even without knowing where the next step is.

Douglas Thornton