It is a constant effort and hard work – and inexplicably life-affirming – to honour who you are, what you believe, and why you are here.*
(Elle Luna)

When our possibility for growth is linked with quests for nobility, honour and enlightenment, we’re engaging in deep work** and fruitfulness will follow in the form of courage, generosity and wisdom.^

I am reminded of my father’s hard work of double-spading^^ our back garden when we moved on his retirement, removing so many stones that he was able to build a wall the whole length of the garden, including a walled enclosure full of stones at the end of the wall.*^

The result was a highly productive garden full of vegetables and flowers, far more than our family could consume and enjoy.

Cal Newport writes about the places people as diverse as Carl Jung, Michel de Montaigne, Woody Allen, Bill Gates, J. K. Rowling and Mark Twain would take themselves in order to engage in deep work.

There is no less a need to take ourselves to an undistracted place when it comes to the deep work of becoming more who we are.

Where do you go to dig deep, remove the stones and clear the weeds from your life?

(*From Elle Luna’s The Crossroads of Should and Must.)
(**Deep Work is the title of Cal Newport’s book of rules for success in a distracted world.
(^See Erwin McManus’ Uprising.)
(^^Digging two spade-depths deep.)
(*^He probably should have sold it as hardcore – possibly missed a trick there.)