Worldchanging - Chop Wood, Carry Water

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Chop Wood, Carry Water

Zaid Hassan
November 3, 2008 4:50 PM

“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." – Zen saying

Oxford, Tuesday, November 4, 2008:

Tomorrow we will be changed. Today we are who we are. It is rare to know the moment of change. It is rare to know that tomorrow we will awaken to altered landscapes, to altered psyches. It is rare to know this moment. While many, many words have been penned about the landscape on the other side of the event horizon, I feel a need to linger here for a few more moments, for just a little while longer. My feet drag ever so slightly, scuffing the ground. As I sit here, far away, on the other side of the ocean, in my little cottage in Oxford, I feel the strange sweetness of this moment, this little moment that will be lost and swept away in the roaring tides of what is to come. It’s a fleeting, perhaps sentimental, moment but it speaks to me.

It tells me to remember that while things will change beyond our wildest imaginings, some things are still certain, some things will not change. While some will wake to joy, others will wake to tears. While the events to come may blow our minds, while we may suffer, while the winds are going to blow loud and strong…some things will remain, constant. Our work will not get any easier. The promise of these moments to come is inevitably the promise of more work, of a renewed effort, no matter what happens, of the work that so many of us have already given our most sacred labour to. Perhaps others will join us; perhaps the weight in our hearts will lighten, perhaps not.

Will we continue to work? What will drive us? What will we wake to in the morning? How will we feel? Who will we be? All these questions remain to be answered but one thing is certain, the work will remain. As we enter into the space of excitement, of this staggering, overwhelming, vertiginous sense of change, I would like to wave this moment goodbye, to send it off gently and to thank its voice, with its tiny, hard wisdom.

See you on the other side.

Photo credit: flickr/Dru, Creative Commons license.

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