01_18_2022

Aiming To Live With Harmony

Recently I have realized that I have had a long-standing goal that I didn’t put words to. In the past, I would have expressed that goal as learning to live with greater ease. My days often feel like they are too compartmentalized, that I have a list of tasks and that I move from one project to the next. And while I can follow this pattern with a sense of a modulated pace, I lack a feeling that my daily engagements feel integrated.

I think I have finally found the term I have been searching for, and that is to live with harmony. A search of the word on the Internet yields the following description:

“Harmony is usually identified as a human value, referring to compatibility and accord  in feelings, actions, relationships, opinions, interests, etc. It denotes a state of balance  among forces influencing and even opposing one another.“

Let me try to describe what it feels like when I believe I have experienced a day living with harmony. I still start the day with a list of intentions of activities that I hope to include in the day. One difference I am noticing in my approach to engage in my list of activities is that I pause periodically to gauge how I’m feeling about the current task.

I explore questions like: “Do I want to continue working on this project, or is there something else calling me?”  “Do I feel the need for some nourishment?”  Nourishment is a broad term in my life; it can mean stopping for lunch or a snack. It can include switching from attending to a task that has to do with daily living to listening to a podcast that offers insight and inspiration on living well. Or it I might feel inspired to go for a walk as the sun is out and the wind has died down.

A couple of useful observations from this exploration emerge as helpful aids in achieving my goal. The first step is being present in the moment while engaging in the current task. Being present raises my awareness of the experience that is underway. Being present enables me to listen to how I’m feeling as I’m moving through the day. When I feel the urge for a different kind of nourishment, I can decide if I want to bring what I am currently doing to a close and then move onto something else.

I want to reach a state of being where I can move through a day without feeling like I have to respond to the annoying “I should” or “You need to” voices telling me what I should be doing. By this stage of my life, I know that I am a responsible person and that I address what needs to happen as well as what I want to accomplish in a timely fashion.

I am finally learning to trust myself, to give myself the gift of moving through life with a greater sense of ease. When I am able to move about the day with a greater sense of ease and peace, I feel more rested than when I am aware of more strident voices pushing me onto the next task.

Sarah Ban Breathnach offers us beautiful words to echo the theme of this Blog.

“Harmony is the inner cadence of contentment we feel when the melody of life is in tune. When somehow we’re able to strike the right chord – to balance the expectations of our families and our responsibilities in the world on the one hand with our inner needs for spiritual growth and personal expression on the other…We learn to balance demands with pleasures, moments of solitude with a need for  companionship, work with play, activity with rest, consciously connecting the wider world through the Internet, and withdrawing from it for the sake of our sanity and serenity…Today, just try slowing down.  Approach the day as if it were an adagio – a melody played at an easy, graceful pace. Listen to music that soothes and uplifts your spirit. An while you listen, pause to consider how all individual notes come together harmoniously to give expression to the entire score.”

I’ve also found David Whyte’s thoughts on rest to be enormously helpful. I quoted these in a recent Blog, but I am including them again as they are apropos.

“To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting, and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to put it right…to rest is to fall back into an inner state of natural exchange…We are rested when we let things alone and let ourselves alone, to do what we do best, breathe as the body intended us to breathe, to walk as we’re meant to walk, to live with the rhythm of a house and a home, giving and taking through cleaning and cooking.

When we give and take in an easy, foundational way, we are closest to the authentic self, and closest to the authentic self when we are most rested. To rest is not self-indulgent. To rest is to prepare to give the best of ourselves…Rested we are ready for the world but not held hostage by it; rested we care for the right things and the right people in the right way. In rest we re-establish the goals that make us more generous, more courageous, more of an Invitation, someone we want to remember, and someone others would want to remember as well.”

What beautiful selections of words to help nourish our desire to live our lives with greater ease. I’ve come to believe that reducing stress in our lives is one of the best steps we can take towards living healthier lives.

Whyte’s  words directing us “to live with the rhythm of a house and a home” gave me another insight. Instead of thinking of the activities associated with creating and maintaining my home as chores, I find it beneficial to recast them as activities that while they may involve work, they lead to an end result that brings me joy.

How I and we label our daily activities also plays a part in creating Harmony in our lives.

Namaste!