It’s easy to take our expectations too seriously. I’ve been wanting to record videos this week, but I haven’t been able to yet. I’m also behind schedule. I have a goal of producing one video a week. Today was going to be the day. And before today, yesterday was going to be the day.
Some things you can’t foresee. I could have never known that there would be trees being felled across from my home office. As I type, people are yelling over the sounds of chainsaws and industrial-grade wood chippers. They’ve been out there all week.
Until they are gone, recording is pointless. My customized RODE condenser mic–which I love to use–picks up everything. And though I can remove a lot of noise (in Reaper) during the editing phase, it’s much easier to record things well in the first place.
For a while, I was getting irritated, but that wasn’t helping at all. So here I am… “pivoting”. I can’t record video, but I can sit down and write. I can also work on my website and a myriad of other things I need to do.
This reminds me of Bruce Lee saying:
“Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
His words echo the ancient Chinese concept of “Wu Wei”, which refers to free-flowing or effortless action; something we might call “flow” these days.
So here I am, flowing around obstacles and feeling good instead of just hunkering down into a depressed state like I might have done a few years ago. Back then I didn’t know how to let go. Instead of being able to surrender my expectations and see the bright side, I would just collapse.
These days, I can see that there’s usually a silver lining to everything that happens. If we’re willing, we can see the positive and move around obstacles. I hope to get better at this and make it an unconscious habit; care to join me?
