Now my face presses firmly against the day-to-day. A search for the quality is unimpeded.
There is still plenty to "do" - the farm has a few lifetimes' work to get it to the condition to which we aspire.
The magnitude of that 'task' and the lack of real imperative for our aspirations highlights the unnecessariness of acting at all.
While some things are responsibilities (like milking, feeding and watering animals), most of what is planned is optional, even on a seasonal basis. The world will not notice much if a crop is not planted, if it withers in the ground, or it senesces without harvest. On a daily basis actions can seem inconsequential.
This may seem like a dark place to be...
This boredom is partly about the same unending list of repetitive daily tasks - sow, tend, harvest. It is also about the same unending repetitive discourse that spins in my mind - expectations, aspirations, recurrent desires, ceaseless fears.
... but it is not a dark place. There is a sort of light. The repetitive cycles are the reality of experience - the context for paying attention. In the boredom, the space for mindfulness appears.
Now the challenge is to avoid the diversions that rush to fill the space that boredom created.
