There comes a time, if you’re lucky and if you’re listening, when you find the thing you were made to do. It doesn’t arrive as a thunderclap or a résumé line. It arrives as a knowing. A quiet pull. A thread that keeps tugging, even when the world is loud.
We call it “work,” but the word is too small. Too bruised by centuries of grind and exploitation. Better to call it a practice. A devotion. A transmission. Your life’s work, when true, is not labor. It is communion. Something flows through you. You don’t own it. You offer it.
But then comes the question. How much should I do? How hard should I push? How long should I sit at the altar of this thing I love?
It is easy to forget that even holy fire needs tending. That devotion without rhythm becomes obsession. That creation without pause becomes erosion.
There is a kind of exhaustion that comes not from too much doing, but from doing without connection. From chasing the product instead of dwelling in the presence. From turning the temple into a factory.
And yet, the work will not execute itself. The vision you’ve been entrusted with won’t walk the earth unless you give it legs. This is the paradox of sacred labor. It is both grace and responsibility. You don’t have to earn your worth by doing it. But if you don’t do it, something in you wilts. Not from guilt, but from neglect of the channel.
So how much is too much?
Too much is when the doing severs you from the Source. When your body clenches. When joy vanishes. When the fire burns you instead of illuminating the path.
And how little is too little?
Too little is when you start to forget. When the thread goes silent. When you feel yourself shrinking from your own capacity. Not out of rest, but out of fear.
The sweet spot is not a number of hours. It is a posture of heart. It is the difference between striving and offering.
You can toil for twelve hours and feel starved. Or give three hours in communion and feel full.
This is not a productivity hack. It is a spiritual rhythm. A deeper form of listening. The kind that asks, not what do I have to do today, but what wants to come through me today?
You are not measured by what you produce. The Divine keeps no scoreboard. But if you are called, answer. Not because you must, but because it is how you say thank you for the gift.
Rest when it’s time. Create when the current moves. Tend your devotion like a sacred fire. Feed it, but don’t smother it. Let it warm others, but don’t burn yourself to keep them from the cold.
In the end, your work is not your identity. But it may be your offering. And if it is done in communion, that is more than enough.