It is easy for me to lose perspective when I am immersed in trying to exact change. I sometimes get to the point where I can't see the forest for the trees and I start spinning in directions I had no intention of spinning and I become so disheartened, first with the behaviors of those around me that are getting me down, and second, with myself for allowing these behaviors to influence me. I am reminded of the story of the king and the well:
There was once a wise king who ruled over a vast kingdom. Now, in the heart of
the city, there was a well with pure and crystalline waters from which the king
and all the inhabitants drank. When all were asleep, three witches entered the
city and poured seven drops of a strange liquid into the well. They said that
henceforth all who drink this water shall be “of a different mind”.
The
next day, all the people drank of the water, but not the king. And the people
began to say, "The king is ‘of a different mind’ and has lost his reason. Look
how strangely he behaves. He is not like us any more."
The king, aware of
what had transpired, was faced with a dilemma: drink from the well and become
like the rest of his subjects, but remain king; or don’t drink from the well,
remain “single minded”, but be swept from power by those who would view his very
state of mind as a threat.
There are times when I feel that I am of a different mind, and that the leaders I work with are like those who drank of the tainted well. Sometimes I feel pressure to move away from my core, my heart space, my WHY, just to fit in. My heart goes out to anyone who has a "calling" that speaks so loudly to them that they CAN'T resist, but who find themselves so often lonely for like minded company and a sense of belonging versus always feeling different and somehow outside of the collective. I find myself wondering if I am truly where I belong.
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