I am currently reading this book. John ODonohue is one of my favorite authors. The Addiction of Distraction (Eternal Echoes) July 24, 2011 at 6:56pm When you choose someone or some way of life, you invest your heart. Choice becomes an invitation to commitment. When you commit, you deepen presence. Though your choice narrows the range of possibility now open to you, it increases the intensity of the chosen possibility. New dimensions of the chosen path reveal themselves; a new path opens inwards to depth and outwards to new horizons. Your choice has freed your longing from dispersing itself over a whole range of surface. When we avoid choice we often become victims of distraction. We flit like the butterfly from one flower to the next, delightfully seduced by its perfume and colour. We remain secretly addicted to the temporary satisfaction and pleasure of immediacy. Kierkegaard divided the life-journey into stages, and he saw that the aesthetic stage was the wanderer whose longing is magnetized on the endless array of novelties. We celebrate the surface unwilling to become acquainted with the depths where the darkness plies its slow and patient transfigurations. The colour and excitement of the surface, though delightful, are ultimately deceptive; they keep us from recognizing the habit of our repetitions and the boredom and poverty that sleep there. When we choose a definite path or partner, we leave the endless array of beckoning surface. We go below the façade of repetition and risk the danger of encounter, challenge, and responsibility. When you choose with discernment, integrity, and passion, you submit yourself to the slow and unglamorous miracle of change. John ODonohue (2009). Eternal Echoes (p. 89). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 12:00:09 +0000