I was listening to Echart Tolle this morning, driving in to work. In talking about being in the present moment, he said that hope can quickly turn to fear: “Everything will turn out well” morphs into “but what if it doesn’t?” Being an optimist, this gave me pause. I do tend to expect everything to turn out well, and am always full of hope. I’ve always thought of hope as a good thing, something that keeps us going when things around us are dark. But, hope does pull us out of the present moment to think (obsess) about the future. And Tolle is right, at least in my case. My hope is always tinged with a bit of fear, that I ruthlessly suppress, since I feel that what you think about you attract.

While I was pondering this, walking into the building, I passed an ornamental bush, its bare branches tipped with fat buds, just waiting for spring to burst forth. Now, it is January, spring is a ways away. But that bush has grown buds, plump with promise. It is not hoping that spring will come. It’s not afraid that spring will never get there. It doesn’t plan and plot and create step-by-step action plans to put forth leaves and flowers in early April, justifying it’s hard work to thrill an audience. It simply grows buds and protects them during the cold weather, and it does it because it does it. It simply is. If it starts to flower during an unusually warm spell in late winter, when a later freeze hits it might lose all its work. Or its branches might be crushed by snow, or any number of things could cause it not to bloom ideally. Yet the bush continues to grow its chubby buds in the winter, without worrying about what could happen, and if it will be successful. And the entire species adapts the way it does so to fit the environment, without fanfare.

So, how to apply this to myself? I have many plans and ideas and things I want to accomplish and states I want to achieve. And to do so, I must plan and work and experiment and try. But, I can do so without obsessing about the outcomes. I can enjoy each present moment – enjoy the work I’m doing – without worrying about whether or not it will bear the fruit I planned for. What it all boils down to, is that reaching the outcome is a moment, just like every moment that works up to it. So spending my present moments worrying about a particular outcome is a waste of moments. Like the ornamental bush, I do the work I do because it’s what I do, and each present moment of my work is rich in promise and experience. The outcome is merely the flowering of the promise, and may or may not happen. Whether it does or does not is moot, as it will be another moment that I will experience one way or the other. Over time I will adapt what I do in response to what happens, but I won’t need to worry or obsess over it.

This puts a whole new light on work….