Learning to purr
I sometimes think that everything, absolutely everything, takes place along a continuum. That is, at one side of the spectrum - or some place in the middle - a quality is positive. It helps you to navigate the world, it allows you to do meaningful work, it tells you what your own particular shape of human life is about. Or maybe it simply keeps you sane.
On the opposite end (and for some things, at either extreme), the same quality has a deleterious effect on you or those who have to be in the same room with you.
Today's example: focus.
I have this in spades, as does my dear adorable brilliant brother. We are both hugely creative people - great big engines of ideas. We never, ever run out of things we want to do, try, or make, nor of the underlying impetus, which is something we want (or rather, need) to say.
That's great, right?
It is. But...we can both veer off into the extreme of focus, which is obsession.
A certain amount of obsession can be good - it provides the necessary drive to get things done.
On the other hand, it can lead one to do something stupid, like, say, get on a bicycle and ride up an uncleared bridge or three before the ice has sufficiently melted to be safely traversable, resulting in broken collarbones and wrecked bikes.
Now before y'all get upset, I did not do this. I had a little Yoda-like talk with myself and amped down the level of urgency and took myself for a brisk little slidey-ice walk instead. No major mishaps.
Not as good as the bike ride would have been - by a factor of about 2,000 - but I don't have a big bloody smear on my chest requiring X-rays and tape and 8 weeks off the bike, either.
Tomorrow it's gonna rain cats and dogs, and I am gonna ride my little ass off in it. Because the temp's going up above freezing and staying there for a few days. Patience, grasshopper.
