… I said suddenly, out of nowhere, almost beseechingly, “Brother David, speak to me of exhaustion. Tell me about exhaustion.” 

And then he said a life-changing thing. “You know,” he said, “the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest.” 

“What is it then?” 

“The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness. You’re so exhausted because you can’t be wholehearted at what you’re doing…because your real conversation with life is through poetry [or whatever you’re passionate about].” 

It was just the beginning of a long road that was to take my real work out into the world, but it was a beginning. 

What do I care most about—in my vocation, in my family life, in my heart and mind? This is a conversation that we all must have with ourselves at every stage of our lives, a conversation that we so often don’t want to have. We will get to it, we say, when the kids are grown, when there is enough money in the bank, when we are retired, perhaps when we are dead; it will be easier then. But we need to ask it now: What can I be wholehearted about now?