Benjamin Teixieira de Aguiar from the Spirit Anacleto
Make sure you are not sad due to forcing yourself to give more than you can. Discipline is the control over the possible, without the paranoia of demanding the impossible. Do not impose a superhuman workload on yourself, excluding from your routine essential activities to your physical, mental and spiritual health, such as leisure, spending time with the family, time dedicated to reading, studying, and knowledge recycling.
If you fail in one of these areas of life, you are incurring in a serious existential deviation, with disastrous implications for you, in the near future. A heart collapse or a devastating cancer, right after the long, carefully awaited retirement, so that you could start what should have been done all along, are dramatic illustrations of how wrong it is not to live with balance, considering all existential areas.
Maybe you cannot watch all your child’s sports competitions or ballet presentations. Probably you will not be able to read to the extension you want or you assume is necessary. You will hardly find leisure that exactly matches your psychological inclinations. However, a few minutes of care and attention to your beloved child, in an unexpected and loving call; reading for a short time, before sleeping; going to the movies or fine dining with your spouse, maybe even a friendly lunch with your co-workers, once a week, are perfectly feasible.
Be careful with the neuroses about wasted time which pervades current culture. Unproductive time is not always a waste, if it promotes the recovery of strength or if it propels you to creative mental states. And time invested in you is never wasted; on the contrary, it is somehow, invariably a substantial indirect gain, if not immediate.
Being a workaholic does not mean to be more responsible or capable than others, but incomplete and sick, living mutilated in diverse existential sectors, walking lamely and in rags, through paths that could be adorned with flowers of joy and peace.
Wake up to life. Feeling good is fundamental.
(Message received on November 20, 2000)