The One In The Driver’s Seat
At a friend’s house, the poet David Whyte was filled with the “demon of envy” when he saw his friend’s “little working paradise”—a space filled with bookshelves, lined with first editions, surrounding a desk perfectly positioned before a window overlooking a stunning mountain landscape.
“I gazed upon that meticulously put together and maintained study as a motorsport aficionado might gaze openmouthed upon a racing-green 1959 Jaguar XK 150 roadster,” Whyte writes.
“I wanted to turn the key and drive this study off into my literary future.”
As he imagined how such a space might enhance his creative output, Whyte snapped out it when recalled once sitting on a crowded train across from “a man crouched on the scruffy floor,” scribbling furiously on a notepad.
Nothing could break the man's focus—“not the accidental kick of his pad by passengers getting on or off at the stops, not his falling back onto his bottom when the train halted in the tunnel. He simply picked up his pen again in whatever position he now found himself in and carried on writing energetically.”
As he stood there in his friend’s little working paradise thinking about that man who didn’t need a little working paradise, Whyte realized, “If I look closely at what I need for work, the prized, internal possession of focus is much more important than the external environment that I might lust after in the abstract.” Like the way someone driving a Ford Focus might be happier than the person driving the Jaguar XK 150, Whyte writes, “It is the one in the driver’s seat, setting the destination and the attitude for the journey of work and vocation, who seems to make up our real possibilities for satisfaction over time.
The difficult truth is that our kingdom does not have to be very big at all in order for us to do good work: what is difficult is simply starting the work and carrying on with it day after day.”
@ebooksCafe
At a friend’s house, the poet David Whyte was filled with the “demon of envy” when he saw his friend’s “little working paradise”—a space filled with bookshelves, lined with first editions, surrounding a desk perfectly positioned before a window overlooking a stunning mountain landscape.
“I gazed upon that meticulously put together and maintained study as a motorsport aficionado might gaze openmouthed upon a racing-green 1959 Jaguar XK 150 roadster,” Whyte writes.
“I wanted to turn the key and drive this study off into my literary future.”
As he imagined how such a space might enhance his creative output, Whyte snapped out it when recalled once sitting on a crowded train across from “a man crouched on the scruffy floor,” scribbling furiously on a notepad.
Nothing could break the man's focus—“not the accidental kick of his pad by passengers getting on or off at the stops, not his falling back onto his bottom when the train halted in the tunnel. He simply picked up his pen again in whatever position he now found himself in and carried on writing energetically.”
As he stood there in his friend’s little working paradise thinking about that man who didn’t need a little working paradise, Whyte realized, “If I look closely at what I need for work, the prized, internal possession of focus is much more important than the external environment that I might lust after in the abstract.” Like the way someone driving a Ford Focus might be happier than the person driving the Jaguar XK 150, Whyte writes, “It is the one in the driver’s seat, setting the destination and the attitude for the journey of work and vocation, who seems to make up our real possibilities for satisfaction over time.
The difficult truth is that our kingdom does not have to be very big at all in order for us to do good work: what is difficult is simply starting the work and carrying on with it day after day.”
@ebooksCafe