H.U.G Corner: Thought of the Week 6/26

Quiet Mind: One-Minute Retreats from a Busy World

Occasionally someone will say to me, “Just sitting and doing nothing seems to be running from the real world, hiding from what you don’t want to face.” My response is to reiterate that intentionally doing nothing is indeed the opposite of running and hiding. This is because it brings you face-to-face with, even to the point of embracing, the most important and challenging aspects of human life, those based on your meanings and values.

As Eliot says, if you want roses, plant trees. What doing nothing can do is help you know what you really want, whether it is roses, or gladiolas, or redwoods, or none of those, so that you don’t end up with a beautiful garden of what you don’t want.

The English novelist quoted above, George Eliot, spoke these words from personal experience. Born Mary Anne Evans into the male-dominated Victorian era, she led her rich and complex life successfully competing in the theological and literary worlds of her time. Her masculine pen name granted her the freedom to be all she aspired to be. Instead of running and hiding, she embraced life as she saw it in the era in which she saw it.

No waiting for a rain of roses for her.

Today, consider if you are waiting for the rain of roses.