The Noble Art of Leaving Things Undone
Posted: Tuesday, September 07, 2010
by Donovan Baldwin
No Diet 4 Me
"Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials."
--Lin Yutang
Our days are filled with things that must be done. There's no doubt about that. In today's inter-connected, world wide web, newest cell phone, satellite news services, we are bombarded with information and knowledge which needs to be absorbed, sorted, and dealt with. We live in a sea of uncertainty with a mass of experts, including me sometimes, telling us how we should live.
We are tasked to constantly do, be, grow, implement, and then do, be, and grow more!
However much you use the tool, you must take a moment from time to time to maintain it.
You and I need some time to look within and find out where all this stuff has gone and what it has done to us. Sometimes, we just need to get away and be alone with ourselves for a while.
In the midst of all this mass of need and knowledge, are tons of things that just don't really matter. We cannot assign the same weight of importance to all bits and bytes of input...or our own processing. As pointed out above, "...the wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials."
Certainly, there are many things which should demand our attention and perhaps even our action. At the same time, there are many things that are just "noise", interference with the reality of living well.
When we eliminate the non-essentials, we not only have more time, and resources to use for those items which are essential, but we also have time to find out what is actually "essential" for us. When we reach a point where we are honestly and openly able to engage the truly important and eliminate the "nonessential", we may find that we are at the happiest and most rewarding point we have ever achieved.
Although I have quoted Lin Yutang at the beginning of this article, I will leave with a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson's essay, "An Apology for Idlers" (which I was reading when the nurse came to tell me my daughter had been born),
"Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself."
You will be very busy...making a better you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Donovan Baldwin is a 65-year-old accountant, amateur bodybuilder, freelance writer, certified optician, and Internet marketer currently living in the Atlanta, Gerogia area. A University Of West Florida alumnus (1973) with a BA in accounting, he has been a member of Mensa and has been a Program Accountant for the Florida State Department of Education, the Business Manager of a community mental health center, and a multi-county Fiscal Consultant for an educational field office. He has also been a trainer for a major international corporation, and has managed various small businesses, including his own. After retiring from the U. S. Army in 1995, with 21 years of service, he became interested in Internet marketing and developed various online businesses. He has been writing poetry, articles, and essays for over 40 years, and now frequently publishes original articles on his own websites and for use by other webmasters. He has just finished re-reading "As a Man Thinketh" and recommends it to fellow idlers. You can also read it at http://xtramoney4me.net/as_a_man_thinketh/ .
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