In a number of areas of my life, I’ve been thinking about whether to keep it together or take it apart:
Online – do I set up a new blog or twitter feed to explore some new topics or do I keep it all centralized here on this blog?
Entrepreneurship – do I just choose one idea for a new company I’d like to start or do I try to whip up a combination of a few of the ideas?
Vacations – do I link a few together for an extended break or take smaller trips that give me more frequent, albeit shorter, breaks throughout the year?
Work-life balance – do I seek to have a schedule that’s more fluid between work time and me time or do I want a line when work ends and me time begins?
There are valid arguments for keeping it together or taking it apart. What I’m wrestling with is which option in which areas of my life generate the most happiness. Which is more efficient? Do I want a life that’s jumbled and fragmented because I like to mix it up? Or would I be happier, and maybe even a little bit more sane, if I took on the mantras of simplicity and consolidation?
Lately I’ve found in my life that I have many more questions that answers. “I don’t know,” is a recurring reply that keeps bubbling up to the surface. In Sanskrit there is a wonderful phrase that is often used when a student asks her guru a question: “neti, neti” (“not this, not this”). The connotation of the phrase has come to be “maybe, maybe not” or “it depends…”
When I consider these questions about keeping parts of my life together or taking them apart, I often feel myself shaking my head slightly and silently repeating, “neti, neti.” I’m wondering now if we should just test it out without worries that we may have to fold and walk away if our new experiments don’t work out the way we want them to. Keep some of it together, take some of it apart, and see how it goes. The prana will point the way.
Christa Avampato 