Showing posts with label The Joys and Lessons of Failed Work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Joys and Lessons of Failed Work. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

The Joys and Lessons of Failed Work

Listening to a talk from the San Francicso Zen Center last night on failure I contemplated all my own failures and how much space and opportunity was in them.

I could not be more thankful for the failing and the realization they provide: that I can relax into comfortable happy Lucky Idiot-hood and smile.

Failure in good company:


The Joys and Lessons of Failed Work by Wendell Berry

I go by a field where once
I cultivated a few poor crops.
It is now covered with young trees,
for the forest that belongs here
has come back and reclaimed its own.
And I think of all the effort
I have wasted and all the time,
and of how much joy I took
in that failed work and how much
it taught me. For in so failing
I learned something of my place,
something of myself, and now
I welcome back the trees.