If You Want To Be Anything, You Have To Work Like A Dog. Or Do You?

As with everything else in life, I come across exactly what I need to hear in the moment. It is exactly what I need to read in that moment. Or be with.

This quote came across my laptop screen from a friend, who shared it with me, because he was going to use it as his new mantra. I agreed with him, because I am in this mode of being lazy. Wanting to follow the pace of nature, I realized that nature never hurries, yet everything, everything gets done in the perfect of time.

I am a Type-A perfectionist child of perfectionist, high-achieving parents. My parents had a really hard life, and they always had to work really hard to get anything done. They had to do, do, do and do some more in order to live a good life. They instilled those same work ethics in me.

Burning out and killing my body, mind, and spirit at the same time – it was a typical way for me to live in this world.

So much so that I would end up in contorted postures where my shoulder spasmed so much or my back was so rigid that I could barely get out of bed in the morning. After medicating myself, and numbing myself as I could, I would get out of bed, to push myself hard once again. Over and over again. 

The Quote And My New Mode Of Life

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humourless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.

Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.”

– Aldous Huxley

It’s all about treading lightly. Living lightly. Doing everything lightly.

Nothing Matters – Tread Lightly Child

Nothing we do matters as much as we think it does. Unless, we are a surgeon doing open-heart surgery or an air traffic controller guiding dozens of planes with hundreds of lives in them safely down to the ground, what we are doing isn’t going to kill anyone or harm anything.

Nevertheless, we put so much pressure on ourselves, thinking that if we don’t do something absolutely perfectly then everything is going to blow up in our faces.

This quote by Aldous Huxley reminds us that whenever we get in that mode of being too much and trying too hard, everything gets dark. Whenever we are unsure of our path, or when we feel like we don’t know what we are here to do, we are trying too hard.

In those moments, the main thing we need to do is step back, take a deep breath, realize it’s all unimportant, and learn to do everything lightly again. Relearn to be light, rather than dark.

Unsure Of Your Path? Get Back To Lightness

This is a big one for me. I notice that there are times in my life when I get really confused about where I am going and what I am doing with myself. I ask myself deep questions like “Who am I?” and “What is my life purpose?” And many more.

I know where all of this heaviness is coming from. The darkness that I feel I am in – the floundering about in the tunnel, looking for the light switch. It is coming from grasping, and trying too hard.

If I could just let go and relax into the light, I would realize everything is working out as it is supposed to be and I am fine. Everything is fine and I have nothing to worry about. I am here and that’s all that matters. Nothing else.

The world doesn’t owe me anything and more importantly, I don’t owe the world anything. All I need to do to prove my worthiness is to be, to be alive, to be truly alive. No need to do anything to be alive. No need to say anything or create anything or anything at all.

Tread lightly, my child.

Even Though You Might Be Feeling Deeply

Being an empath and a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), I know that I take everything way too seriously. I feel everything so deeply. Aldous Huxley reminds us to feel everything deeply because we are human feelings, but still to take everything lightly.

When we start taking everything too heavily, we start putting too much effort into it. We start dealing with it in a dark manner, with a lot of energy and affectations. It’s like we start overacting and overdoing.

I keep on telling myself nowadays whenever I want to take things seriously that I am a little child, the child of this universe and all I need to do is take things lightly. Lightly, my child.

Even with death, one of the most ‘serious’ subjects out there, you need to take a step back and relax. It isn’t as deep, and heavy as we make it out to be. We might die tomorrow, but what of it?

Have we lived enough? If we have, it doesn’t matter when we die.

If we haven’t lived enough, then it is our duty to start living right now, and that’s all we can do.

Being heavy about something isn’t going to change the essential value of it.

There Are A Hundred Things Trying To Pull Us Down

A million things on this planet are going wrong all the time. The world is dying. The Earth is suffocating. Species are being killed. Forests are being annihilated. Children are suffering and starving. People are being murdered. The ozone layer is getting depleted. Hundreds of wrong things.

We could focus on all of these things. All of this quicksand is trying to pull us into despair, sadness, and misery. We could let it do that. Or we could tread lightly yet again.

Lightly, lightly, lightly my child.

Lightly, so that we realize it is all happening, and we feel deeply about it, but we still tread lightly. We don’t beat ourselves down for not caring, because that doesn’t do anything, except make us feel bad. We do what we can in the way we can, but we do it all lightly.

The lighter we can be about it, the easier it will be for us to deal with everything that comes at us.

Let Go Of All Baggage, Unencumbered

We meet everyone with a hundred prejudgements. We do everything with so much baggage.

What would happen if we could go into everything with lightness? No need to carry all of this baggage on our back. I read this story that when we were children, we were told a hundred things that are wrong with us that we need to hide or tuck away. We all carried these bags as children in which we placed all of the things that we were told were unacceptable. As adults, our role is to take this bag off our shoulders, start examining what is in the bag, integrate it back with ourselves, and throw the bag away.

Tread lightly, my child.

No need to even bring a sponge bag with us, as Aldous Huxley says, We can be as we are, without any unencumberment.

We are free.

All we need is ourselves, our thoughts, and our bodies.

As we are.

How I Want To Walk Through The World

I have been wanting to walk lightly through the world. Lightly, my child.

This translates into the physical way I walk through the world – lightly stepping through the world, not stomping, or stamping my feet as I walk.

I also want to walk lightly in my business – so not getting unencumbered by hundreds of useless tasks, but doing everything softly and lightly. Knowing that there are only a few things that are truly important to my business, and doing them slowly, softly, and lightly every single day.

Same thing with my relationships – going into each relationship with light. Knowing that everyone is going to bring their own burdens into the relationship and it is my responsibility to be light with them, and generous with my praise.

Everything, everything, everything. I want to walk lightly in everything.

The Sign Of Heaviness Is Grasping, And Wanting

Whenever I start feeling like I want something really badly and I start grasping at anything, I know I have gone into heavy mode.

Lightly, my child, is the mantra that I tell myself.

If I am squeezing the toothpaste tube too hard, ease back. Yelling at the taxi driver or at the internet provider or my water delivery person? Step back. If I am running really hard, or walking really fast, or doing my yoga poses with a lot of force, smile and lighten up.

We can bring this lightness into everything we do.

We Are Taught Heaviness Will Translate Into Success

As I cut back on the heaviness in my life, in my business, and in myself, I notice all of the demons come up in my head. They tell me that if I am not busy or if I am not heavy or if I am not doing a lot, I am never ever going to be a success. If I am being light, I am going to be failure and I am going to tossed aside.

Lightly, my child?

No, of course not. If I want to be a success in anything, I need to be heavy and dark in it. If I don’t push, grasp, and stomp away, then nothing is going to happen.

But is that how nature does things? Do birds in the sky fly really hard all the time in order to glide through the skies? And do squirrels run around in a frantic hurry trying to collect nuts for their meals? Do the berries try harder to grow red and luscious?

I don’t believe so. Nature is the lightest one of all of us. If we want to learn about being light, all we need to do is go back to nature, and realize that we don’t need to do anything in a heavy manner in order to be a success.

That’s just a misnomer, a misguided teaching that has been perpetuated by this consumeristic, and materialistic society.

Walk Softly, Tread Lightly, Be Here And Now

We are here for a really short period of time. In the grand scheme of things, the billions of years that the universe has been here for, we will be alive for maybe a 100 years at most.

That’s nothing.

Why are we taking ourselves so seriously? Would anything we do really matter so much? It doesn’t really matter. If we are going to be here for such a short period of time, how about treading lightly and not bringing so much heaviness into our short lives?

Let’s not be a burden to the Earth. Be a support to her in her lightness. Let’s learn from nature, and be light, light, light.

When you think you are being light, try and be a little bit more lighter.

Rainbows are there to remind us to be lighter. Birds are the same and children do the same. Water. Nature. Light. Air. Breeze. Sleep. Colour.

Lightly, my child. Let’s be light, and be light, and be light.