Sitting on the Gatwick Express going into London, an action packed week ahead of me; staying with friends, meeting Danielle Laporte, taking the train to Paris for the weekend to spend time with my nieces who live there, going back to London for some more friends and a big talk on Monday night before I fly home on Tuesday night. Some kind of calm always come over me in situations like these. Calm because I know I’m living fully.
Summer vacation is always a bit stressful before I have planned everything out; knowing who to be with when and where. It’s not that I constantly have to do, do, do, but it needs to have some kind of purpose. If the purpose is relaxation then I’m fine with that.
But no purpose, no doing, no plan, that feels like waste. Anxiety-producing. I didn’t even know that that’s what I felt about it until I articulated it to a friend. She asked me why I was constantly running, learning, exploring, adventuring, moving… and I said it: “Otherwise it feels like I’m wasting life.”
It’s been lingering, since I said that. Can you really waste life? Is a life filled to the brink a life better lived than a more quiet one? Is doing a virtue at all?
Life quality is not about doing things, it’s about how you’re feeling as you’re doing what you’re doing (Danielle taught me that!). The more you get to feel the way you want to feel the better you’ll perceive your life quality. And the trick is to learn how to produce those feelings in the small things in your everyday so that you don’t have to wait for the few and far between grandiose moments in your life (which usually are overrated anyhow).
I don’t have an answer to this yet but her question is certainly getting me thinking. And this is where I’ll be for a bit I think. Enjoying the question without having to have a clear answer. Figuring out the balance between doing and being, between thinking and consciousness. I know where my edge is, where’s yours?
With all my love,
Helena