An Exploration of Motivation

At the dawn of the new year I find myself questioning motivation. What is motivation? Where does motivation come from? How do I find myself in the moment of no-motivation? Is motivation connected with desire? Is there a higher force that factors into motivation?

Recently, I find that I am constantly without motivation to do much of anything. All the old ways and habits are questioned. I find myself in a space of open air, between lives. It is as though what I was last year is dead. What I am now is newborn. There is the peculiar curiosity of what to do. Is that something I need to force? Perhaps, instead, it is simply given when the moment is ripe.

If that is the case, what is necessary is patience. In the space of interval, the act of patience is called to inhabit. A habit of patience. Active, it is poise. Passive, it is boredom.

The necessity is the act of poise. Poise: the active vigilance of patience. Vigilance: persistent witnessing of life. It is the silent action of watching. A waiting for the vision of what is to be asked of one. An interlude. A moment.

The negative aspect manifests as unconscious movement. A lack of respect for the necessary patience – the interval. The space between events calling one to action. It brings a movement into old patterns. A wish simply to keep the inevitably dying plant alive. Locked out of the breath of life, instead of breathing in the air of empty space, one finds boredom. Identification with the old. Thinking something needs to fill emptiness.

Truth be told, poise is possible no matter the external activity. One may attach the negative element to the little acts of twiddling thumbs, staring at one’s phone, or pacing. But these acts have their meaning – a temporary filling of the uncomfortably empty space. Poise is possible within them. But to recognize they just fill an uncomfortable interval. A help in waiting until the call is risen within for fulfillment of the next act in the drama. Poise is the readiness to leap at that moment one is needed. Faith?

Maybe motivation then comes of its own accord – from nowhere. Being attentive to that call to life is duty, obligation. When that time is now, then now I will have the possibility to act. Until then, I wait in patient poise. Maybe all it takes is a moment of the needed action of poise for the call to arise from the depths. Void – it may seem. Maybe this is just a call to vigilance at all moments. Awakening, dying, Being reborn. Is this the possibility of every moment? Is the new year, (the solstice?), only reminder of this fact?

When the time has come, will I know?