“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Our society is still as influenced by varying perceptions of how life “should be”. Not only are there myriad lenses through which millions of people visualize what life should be, but there is an internal struggle within most of us that shapes our personalities.
We are all familiar with the introvert/extrovert and thinker versus feeler personality descriptors. We might be a little less familiar with the intuitive versus sensing, as well as the judging versus perceiving descriptors. While it can be fun – and helpful – to generally characterize our personalities with these criteria, we can also look at these criteria as four internal battles that most people fight every day. To be sure, very few people are 100% thinkers and 0% feelers, so there must be an ongoing dialogue between the brain and heart that each individual will consistently work through. These internal personality battles, combined with our recalled experiences and belief systems, shape what life “should be” for us and millions of people across the street, across our cities and across our world.
Imagine developing a single set of laws to ensure that every lens is satisfied. Imagine writing the most persuasive social media post that would influence every person who sees what life “should be” through the millions of lenses.
Given this impossibility, we pray for not only the leaders of this country and world, but that all people in this world can be more graceful in this present moment than they were an hour ago. We pray that we, ourselves, can take off our glasses and look through those worn by others. And we pray for healing that can bring us all together into the present and away from the past. We pray that we intelligently use our present resources to reduce risks of the future, and to increase joys for tomorrow. But, we also pray that we not paralyze ourselves worrying that we’ll lose in the future the things that we truly have no entitlement to own today. Including our heartbeats and breaths.
This is not an easy prayer. This is a prayer that requires humility. It requires balancing Quixote’s idealism with Sancho’s practicality. It does not require a perfect balance. Just a humble balance.
Bene-action:
Track what you worry about the most: something that happened in the past, or something that might happen in the future. Then, take a deep breath and exhale while looking at your immediate surroundings. Then pray a thankful prayer for three things that you can tangibly see, and one thing you cannot tangibly see: the breath of air that you just deeply exhaled.
Common Sensitivity 