A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough Read Online Free PDF Page A

into a completely new, untried, and untested path for the rest of our lives. More likely they resemble the choice we make when we have to decide whether or not to attend our son’s soccer game this afternoon. We have gone to most games this season, and we are feeling especially tired, may feel a cold coming on, but we don’t want to disappoint our child or feel like we are a bad parent. So our choice is whether or not to sit for a few moments and have a cup of tea to think more about it, or jump up, get dressed, and run out the door.
    These tiny choice points arise hundreds of times every day. They are small, humble, tender things. They are difficult not because they are large and dramatic; they are hard only because of our love and our genuine yearning to do the right thing.
    This, then, is the next part of our journey together. Each choice we make that feels reliable and true produces a senseof being and having enough in this moment. A life made of such moments, strung together as pearls on a necklace, can become—as surely as gravity guides a stream to the sea—a surprisingly elegant and beautiful journey of deep contentment and sufficiency.
    The magnificent Irish poet John O’Donohue, rascal, wizard, and friend, recently passed away. He left us, among so many precious, impossibly beautiful moments, these words:
    FLUENT
    I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding .

Following the Thread
    T his poem by William Stafford has long been a trustworthy place to return if I feel lost or confused about how to move gently through the tumultuous challenges in the world:
    THE WAY IT IS
    There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread .
    Every day of our lives we face a series of choice points. These are moments that require some decision—to work at our desk or get something to eat, to get up early or sleep in, to have lunch with a friend, or go for a walk by ourselves, to make a phone call or read a book, to take our child to the basketball game or find another parent to drive.
    This is but a small sampling of the countless choice points we face every day. As our technologies multiply the speed and frequency of choices coming at us, at dizzying frequency, the faster we feel compelled to respond to each choice. We are accosted by choice points that come at us as bullets from an automatic weapon—computer-generated emails, tweets, mail, phone calls, text messages, voice mails—all piled on top of the myriad choices anyone makes in the course of a day at work or as part of a family. Culture, technologies, and their requirements override more gently subtle events like the sunrise and sunset, and thus they erode any rhythm of a natural life and fervently drive the arc of our days.
    Two things combine to increase our suffering as we try to comply with this avalanche of choices. First, we feel compelled to make decisions more quickly, which ensures they will be less thoughtful, reflective, or accurate. And second, we feel that the potential impacts and consequences of each choice are so far-reaching, it is impossible to know if we have ever chosen carefully enough, wisely enough.
    We are likely to find ourselves tied in knots. Each choice we make can feel as if we are either ensuring or destroying a vast array of future possibilities, as if worlds are being created and destroyed in front of our eyes with each decision. We feel responsible to choose perfectly each time, as each way we go somehow decides the shape of our destiny. Choices take on more and more weight, as we project their impact further and further into the future. What will