To this day, I still get so absorbed in what I’m doing that I totally merge into it.  This is Lao Tzu’s concept of non-action, where, as Stephen Mitchell explains in his introduction to the Tao te Ching, “The game plays the game, the poem writes the poem, we can’t tell the dancer from the dance.”

Less and less do you need to force things,
Until finally you arrive at non-action.
When nothing is done,
Nothing is left undone.

Here’s my personal challenge, however. When I’m so absorbed in the thing in front of me, I stay in the mouse’s close-up world, and lose the vision of the eagle, the ability to push back in my chair, stretch, and take a broad view of where I’m headed.  Both are vital as we look at our work: that which is our destiny and inspires us.

So my commitment to myself is to shift to the eagle’s view more often, certainly at least once each day.  As you’ve been playing this week, have you remembered to shift your focus large and small, eagle and mouse?