from my very special book of meditation - In beauty may I walk...Words of wisdom by Native Americans - had me thinking:
....we are members of the sacred hoop of life, along with the trees and rocks, the coyotes and the eagles and fish and toads, that each fulfills its purpose. They each perform their given task in the sacred hoop, and we have one, too.
~ Wolf Song
Abenaki
We, each one of us, has a duty to perform wherever we are placed by life. And we have to just perform our given task, and fulfill our purpose.
Which to my mind means that we need to see to it that we do our best and give of our best wherever we have been placed by life. Look at a tree - it stands where it has been placed, its branches cover a certain span, its roots go down to a certain depth,and various small animals live on it, both above and below the ground, and depend on it for succor. We depend on the tree for Oxygen and shade and it nourishes our soul with its beauty. But the tree stays where it is. It does not stretch out its branches anywhere else just because it sees a weary traveller walking a little distance away, it does not suddenly provide more food to feed other little animals that roam around, it does not sprout any more branches than it should or send them out in other directions than it is supposed to.....It just IS and provides succor and nourishment for the body and soul for those who fall in its path. Which is exactly what we too should do I believe. Instead of stretching ourselves out all over the place trying to help everyone, trying to fill gaps which we often see only at a distance...in short thinking that we are someone very special and can solve everyone's problem. For one thing we cannot and for another, we are required to be in one particular place and do our best there. Nowhere else. So many times we feel we can sort out other people's problems and end up only making a worse mess, for we move out of where we are supposed to be. For all you know if we had just stayed where we were, we'd have been of more help...
Think about this....We each have our place in the sacred hoop of life.