About well-being

I get an email from the Prairie Home Companion folks every now and then. Today, Garrison Keillor answered a question from a listener who asked, "How do you define well-being? What do you do to achieve it?" Here is part of his response.

...my sense of well-being comes from waking up each day with work to do. It was different when I was in college: the work was imposed by teachers and so much of it seemed irrelevant, make-work, a lot of pointless exercises. What you hope for in life is a sense of a calling, a vocation, which simply means that one goes to one's work gratefully, not out of fear or habit but with a whole heart. It's the whole-heartedness that makes for well-being.

I do, indeed, like the emphasis on whole-heartedness. Yes, that lets us know we're in the right work. It is also an important quality to bring to our meditative practice. In fact, our meditative practice can give us the tools and the skills to bring whole-heartedness to almost any work we may happen to be doing.