Doing and Non-Doing

 

Doing and Non-Doing

We are always making plans, always finding reasons to do things, or not to do things.  The mind knows the way, but it is in distinguishing the way that we go wrong.  Our nature has been to live up to ideals, to live up to goals, but there in the midst of our striving the ideal and the goal are indistinguishable from the unacceptable and the aimless.  

As diverse as we consider ourselves to be, the real problem lies in the monotony of our diversity.  Most of it is only an admission of an ongoing trend, and the rest is a demand to be like others already there.  You can only go as far as sanity allows, but sanity heeds no excess when pursuing what is allowable.  In living up to your dreams there is the presupposition that you want to bring the world down to your understanding; thus, what we allow always inclines to the ideal.  

Like it or not, we can never admit to anyone that we are doing nothing, and what we do admit of doing is always more than what is done.  To sit back and let the world move along is perhaps a luxury most of us believe is not possible, but could we be courageous enough to wait and gaze into the unknown, we might perhaps find that there is indeed something in store for us. 

Douglas Thornton