Member-only story
Inspiration, Not Motivation
Spring is rolling in here in New York. It always feels like a miracle, every single time.
Along the path in the woods where I walk the dogs, some onion grass appeared and in the neighbor’s yard the first daffodils are beginning to sprout.
It’s been reminding me of something Eckhart Tolle wrote, at the beginning of his book A New Earth. He referenced the Earth, 114 million years ago, when the first flower appeared, and how it must not have lasted long, in isolation and without consistent, favorable conditions.
But at some point, a critical threshold was reached and there was widespread flowering. It’s such a powerful image to consider — the Earth before we existed on it — covered in flowers.
What I love most about this passage is the idea of a ‘critical threshold’. A point where things can no longer stay the same. Suddenly, they must shift.
Many of us have been through some version of this. We endure and endure and endure until a critical threshold is reached inside of us and we change.
Sometimes there’s an event that kickstarts the change — a diagnosis, a loss, a brush with death. Sometimes it’s less overt. We simply wake up one morning and decide: I’m done. No more. I’m not going to live this way any longer. I’m done with this job, this relationship, this negative…
