So are you harvesting in the hours of the day in which you're dedicating yourself?

From a conversation between Rick Rubin of the poet David Whyte on Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast:

And then the last step I call harvest, and that’s the ability to bring in the harvest of everything you’ve been working towards.

Both in the sense of, it might be harvesting a profit, but harvest in the sense of when you’ve produced a piece, it’s making sure it gets out in the world, and that you’re there with it when it’s out. So that’s another kind of harvest. Then there’s the celebration which is associated with harvest.

So many places you’ve just achieved something really marvelous together, and a split second later the next day you’re on to something else. There’s no celebration, there’s no saying, let’s go out to dinner, let’s look at what we’ve done, let’s slap each other on the back, let’s just go out on the river on a boat for a day, and just say we did that, and we’re quite remarkable, and let’s just give it a rest for a moment before we turn our face enthusiastically to the next sowing. Then the real corollary of harvest though is, are you harvesting in the hours of the day in which you’re working, or are you working in a dynamic of conditionality?”

“I’ll get to my happiness when I’ve done this project. I’ll do what I really want when the kids are through school, when the house is paid off, when I’m in a better relationship, when I’ve got this amount of money in the bank, when I’m retired, and the ultimate conditionality is I’ll get to it when I’m dead. When all the responsibilities have gone.

So are you harvesting in the hours of the day in which you’re dedicating yourself? Because it’s not a passive process to work. You’re shaping an identity.

It’s like practicing. You think of most people in what we call ordinary jobs. There are no real ordinary jobs, but you’re working eight, nine, if you’re in leadership, 10, 11 hours a day.

Imagine if you practiced a musical instrument for eight, nine, 10 or 11 hours a day. Wouldn’t matter if you had any musical proclivity at all. You would become incredibly good at the clarinet, at the piano, at the saxophone.

So you’re becoming incredibly good at whoever you’re practicing at being in the hours of the day. So Harvest asks you to say, by the way I am in my every day, who am I practicing at becoming? Do I actually want to become that person?

(via SIX at 6).