Quotes That Matter — Week 3

Paul Dunion

This week’s quote is one of my own. You can’t get life right. But, if you allow, life may get you right.Given the guidance we receive from Rilke and Frankl, we may find enough ego adjustment to allow life to get us right. If we don’t follow their suggestions, it is likely that we will reduce life to an endless series of projects. The goal then is to summon enough ambition in order to attempt to successfully get each project right. This project orientation only guarantees to keep us busy and living with extreme pressure to deliver appropriately.

The project lifestyle has no soul. It reduces us to being a functionary. Our life can only be calibrated to some favorable project outcome. We are locked into the perfunctory ingredients of some blueprint. We can’t hear life calling us to more soul, more acceptance, more compassion, more courage, more forgiveness or more mindfulness. Projects can’t provide meaning and therefore can’t provide a genuine sense of belonging.

Rilke calls us to live large, bringing passion and purpose to places we’ve never been before, allowing for shameless defeat. Frankl calls us to pause and listen to life’s requests. Together, they allow us to live intimately. In such an intimacy, life will remind us over and over again who we are. From these reminders, there’s ample opportunity for life to get us right.