Today's
Meditation:
There
are so many ways to take this passage that it can boggle
the mind. Is Franz encouraging us to do nothing but
sit around in order to reach enlightenment? Or is he
going deeper, showing us a way of seeing something that we
never will see otherwise as we hurry through life, running
from task to task and unable to sit silently for any
reason, at any time?
I
know that I'm far too often task-oriented, trying to
accomplish as much as I can with the short time that I've
been granted on this planet. I often feel that I
should spend more time sitting at the table and just
enjoying the fact of being, without putting any
expectations or worries on myself. But life
intrudes, and bills must be paid and other people have
expectations of me that must be fulfilled.
"The
world will freely offer itself to you." I think
that the world freely offers itself to us all the time,
but we're just too busy to accept the offer. Any
gift that is given requires a recipient, or it's no gift
at all, is it? And if life is offering itself to us
and we can't take it, then we've closed ourselves off to
one of the most wonderful gifts we possibly can imagine.
I
may never know what Franz Kafka means with these words,
but I do know that in the future, I'll have a much better
idea of what it means to sit silently at a table,
waiting. Perhaps I won't be waiting for life--I'll
be waiting instead for my heart and soul to slow down
enough and open up enough to see and understand and accept
what life is offering to me.
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