When I was sitting quietly, letting whatever wanted to be expressed this week on the blog to arise from within, a curious phrase rose to the top of my mind. Over a lifetime, I’ve learned to respect what comes up, and to be curious about it, because there are often wise nuggets in there for me, as crazy as it all might seem initially.
The phrase was: “The joy was hidden behind the nest of responsibility.”
The image of a bird’s nest came immediately into my mind, with all the joy hidden behind it, shouting “Look at us! We’re behind you!”
Sometimes, on a pilgrimage, it’s just a plod. But that doesn’t mean that the joy has gone away. It’s still there. It just isn’t in our field of vision in the moment.
This week the joys were out of my field of vision, but that was due to my faulty, black or white thinking.
This week, like a mother bird, I have been singularly focused. I’ve been plodding along, getting my 2021 business accounting finished so that I can submit all of information for my taxes to my accountant.
My black or white thinking about doing taxes was this: doing taxes = no joy.
In my thinking, I could either meet my responsibility to do tax work, or experience joy, but not both at the same time. (I know, I could easily experience joy when I get the taxes behind me, but I’m not there yet.)
Then a friend shared her experience of the joy she had in doing her taxes, and she challenged me to find the joy in doing my taxes.
I love a good challenge, so I looked behind that nest of responsibility to discover all the joys that were there.
And, miracle of miracles, I started to feel joy in the tax work. Ever since I was a math minor in college, I have loved numbers and purely rational things, for which there are answers.
So much of my work is intangible, intuitive, and in the realm of exploring the unknown (I love all those things too!), that to have a pile of tasks in front of me that are clear and tangible and measurable, that is a joy.
If you have a nest of responsibility, where are the joys in it, for you?
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