I had the privilege of introducing Pam McLean, president of the Hudson Institute, at their annual conference last month when I was MCing. People really loved this quote I used to introduce her, one from James Michener. Pam is a true master at living, so I thought it was appropriate.
Masters in the Art of Living draw no distinction between their work and their play,
their labor and their leisure
their mind and the body
their education and their recreation.
They simply pursue their vision of excellence in whatever they are doing and leave it to others to decide if they are working or playing.
To themselves, they are always doing both.
How are you doing at bridging the polarity of work and play? It is one of our big psycho-spiritual chores in life—to integrate our work and our play into a web, if not a seamless web, at least a somewhat integrated one.
The path for addressing this chore is the imagination, the energy we can use to bring our soul to both work and play—where all endeavors have an element of soul. The transformative power of the human imagination can turn the hum-drum into the hot-diggity, the menial into the meaningful. We can turn play less into an escape and more into a joy.
Happy visions of excellence, pilgrims. Leave it to others to decide what you are doing.