A friend once said it is important to be open-handed with money. When you are open-handed, you can freely receive what is given to you and you of course can then freely give. How many of our anxieties come when we are holding things too tightly?
Money is merely a tool – a currency. It is the means, not the end, although many times we treat it as such. The goal is to let it flow through our hands like water, channeling it to the places it will bring the most life.
In The Parable of the Talents, the master decides how much money each servant gets. The servants do not really get to determine how much they have or don’t have, which many of us try pretty hard to do. It doesn’t really matter if you have a little or a lot, as long as you try to do something with it.
Finance: Every transaction – saving, spending or giving – is an investment. Some just have a better return than others.
One of the things we grab hold of as grown-ups is the capacity to be “meta,” which is the ability to get outside of ourselves and look in. This is what many of us call self-awareness. It is a gift, for the “unexamined life is not worth living,” but there is also a risk of forever evaluating your own and others’ actions and thoughts. There is a time to just be in the moment and not have any “awareness.”
It’s really interesting because many of the things we consider “therapeutic” are things that give us back this inherent rhythm. We yearn for them and don’t even know it: breathing deeply, music, art, dance, swinging, hypnosis, touch, digging in the dirt. What other things are rhythmic/therapeutic?
What we are talking about is our bodies’ need to recover following work, a balance between activity and rest. Real rest is some activity or lack thereof which replenishes energy. It does not have to be sleep but can be. It can be stamp-collecting or riding a bike. It can be playing or listening to music.