Throwing Yourself 100% into Your Dharma and Pulling the Battery Out of the Clock

I’ve been reading (well, listening to—thank you, Audible) Stephen Cope’s book The Great Work of Your Life, and, although I’ve read it before, it’s hitting me like something brand new.

Here’s my new mantra: name your dharma (roughly defined—what you were put on the earth to do), throw yourself into your work 100%; hand the results over to a higher power, and in this way connect your soul to the soul of Spirit.

I understand this is not a new formula or series of ideas, but what is different for me is my deep understanding that your dharma doesn’t have to be epic. You don’t have to do something huge to do something amazing. And by huge I mean something that gets a million Twitter followers and changes the world and earns you tons of money. And by amazing I mean something that resonates deeply with your core self and, in that resonance with self, you inherently end up resonating with, and thereby serving, others.

There can be so much pressure to find your purpose.

Why am I even here?

Pulling weeds at Spirit Hill Farm the last few weeks and cleaning chicken poop and trying to figure out how to prune hydrangeas has reminded me that the world can ask us to show up in ways that are so quiet.

Yesterday I replaced the battery in the clock that is on the wall, and now time ticks. It’s the worst.

Before it was five something o’clock. Time had shifted because, on the wall at least, time was still or, at least, quiet. I’m taking that stupid battery out as soon as I finish writing this. The clock makes a little noise: tick, tick, tick. It’s whispering hurry hurry hurry. But time is a story human beings made up that really kicked into practice with the Industrial Revolution, and suddenly time was money.

My inhale and exhales are happening and the idea that I inhaled at a certain time and exhaled at another can make me think I’M LATE! I’M IN TROUBLE! I NEED TO MAKE MORE MONEY! TIME IS GOING SO QUICKLY! SOON I WILL DIE!

When I need a break, I go to the apple orchard to pull weeds. There are these dead spiky plants that are black and hollow-stemmed. I don’t know what they are, but they are extraordinarily satisfying to work with because they basically slide out of the ground if I grab the stem at the right place and pull. I can end up yanking and swearing and struggling if I don’t get the pull just right, and so it’s extra great when I find the right spot and I get to experience the slide.

I have to keep myself on a short leash with those plants because otherwise I’d be out there all day, doing work that doesn’t need to be done. The orchard is fine whether those plants stand or fall. This is my water-cooler time, my cigarette break, my commercial interruption. It’s my do a do-a-line-of-coke time.

Like I do coke. I barely let myself drink the stuff! But sometimes it makes me feel good to know I could do it if I wanted. I’m not all good girl, follow the rules, you know. I could do cocaine if I felt like it!

But, ahem.

I like to think about throwing myself 100% into the things I feel are my dharma, which, right now, are coaching others to write and helping to keep a friend’s property running well. My overarching dharma is to show people how great they are. To be a cheerleader. These things feel good. The change is that, before, I might have thrown myself 75% into what I felt was important to me because I always had a back-door plan. An escape route.

What happens when I shift from trying 75% or 90% effort/commitment to 100%? I don’t have to contend with doubt. There isn’t room for me to wonder if I’m doing the right thing or if I should stop and do something else because I have thrown myself over the cliff. I am in.

The question is not Am I good enough? The question is Am I in 100%?

And this is where we go back to the idea that your dharma doesn’t have to be something huge like curing cancer or paving all the roads of Boston so you can finally see the white lines. It’s just what you do: teach yoga, take photographs, mother, father, dig, sing, sweep. The huge part is the 100% commitment. That’s where the magic happens. The weight of committing 90% of something is that you can’t fully enjoy or experience your work because part of your brain is wondering, tick tick tick, when is time going to run out: when are you going to run out?

I am learning the taste of stay.

It’s so sweet.