"The rule is to carry as little as possible."
-- Henry Thoreau, Walden
{Walden Pond, from here}
There's a question on the Myers-Briggs exam that I always answer without the slightest hesitation.
"Do people exhaust or energize you?"
Exhaust.
No question.
Jordan can talk to people for hours on end, and I can too. But when I'm done, I feel like I need to pull a Rip Van Winkle. Jordan, on the other hand, acts like he's just had a two-liter of Mountain Dew.
So why do I force myself to points of exhaustion by surrounding myself by people and taking their problems on my already burdened shoulders?
It's time to let go.
I think Thoreau may have had the right idea. For years, I've been semi-obsessed with Thoreau and his few friends who urged each other to "simplify, simplify, simplify." I think I'd like to join them. I'd like to take a couple of days and sit quietly by Walden Pond, soaking in its beauty. I'd like to purge myself of others' problems and my own burdens that are weighing me down.
I'd like to retreat, to open up my soul and to close my mouth.
This week, I think I will. Even if it's in the privacy of my own backyard, I intend to be a little more quiet this week. I intend to mind my own business, to listen more and to comment less.
Who's with me?
"Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand..."
-- Thoreau, Walden
2 comments:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Wow ~ how did my children become so deep. I just decided today to keep my mouth shut and mind my own business. I had a good day. Wish I could set it to poetry :)
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