1.
They say the grass is greener where you water it. But we could be watering our own grass while paying attention to the other side at the same time. This is easier to do now than it ever has been.
There will always be someplace better—if we keep looking. Sometimes, it is best that we learn to stop looking, even for just a moment. So, for that moment, nowhere else is better than here.
Much of discernment involves looking ahead and predicting where we might be happiest, most fulfilled, or even wealthiest. But what I’m slowly and painfully learning is the skill of looking down and just sitting on the grass I’ve been watering.
2.
We can only force so much. We can only control so much. Sometimes, we want to go north, but the wind is coming south.
Just wait. It’ll come around.
3.
The writer Oscar Wilde once wrote, “If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment […] If you never know what you want to be, you will never become anything, and that is your reward.”
Years later, actor and director Sir Stephen Fry alluded to this in an interview: “There is a truth to that. We are not nouns; we are verbs. I am not a thing—an actor, a writer—I am a person who does things—I write, I act. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”
Consider the question “What do you do?” for instance. We are accustomed to answering with a noun—a position, job, or role—but doesn’t it ask for a verb?
I’ve applied this to my own life. For many years, I’ve stuck to a verb, sometimes two. And this simple practice has provided much-needed direction, especially on the days when I forget where I’m headed.
Nouns are stagnant, but verbs signify movement and purpose. Know your verb, and everything else follows.
4.
Nothing quite distills the discernment process as accurately as this: While some choices are better for us than others, there is no such thing as the best choice. There is only making a particular choice the best for us.
Given that we have considered all possibilities thoroughly and that a choice isn’t inherently hurting us or anyone else… Ultimately, it is our sustained commitment to that choice that makes it the right one.