A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine about the non-profit world. He had been working 80-hour weeks, for months, after the California state budget freeze to get his non-profit through the difficult economic times and simply because there was so much to do.

He said that the worst thing about the last months, however, was not the financial crunch, but the exhaustion he felt and the anger he put on all his colleagues and friends during that time.

I know I’ve done it too. In the name of nature and with the environmental crisis in our faces every day, it is easy to justify over-working. But how ironic, that while I am trying to create a better, more just, healthy, and fair world for everyone – a world in which we want our children to be happy and safe ever after – I am a source of stress and unhappiness myself.

My friend said that he believes now that the meals on the fly as we are creating a healthier food system, the endless work hours as we are striving for true sustainability, and what ever else we do to our bodies and environments in the wake of our burn-out, is simply another form of violence, a hidden one, silently accepted and justified by the “importance of our work.”

Yes our work is critical, and important, and while there is never enough money, never enough time to get all the things done that we must achieve in life, never a time without obstacles, and challenges and heartbreak, I, from now on, will make an extra joyous commitment to putting my effort into effortlessness – to remember that everything is vibration and that the world around us is a reflection of our internal vibration – and that at the end of the day, us “being” is so much more important than us “doing.”

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