In the midst of an usually-too-hectic work life, this is a favourite story I used to tell my colleagues

While visiting the University of Notre Dame, where I had been a teacher for a few years, I met an older experienced professor who had spent most of his life there. And while we strolled over the beautiful campus, he said with a certain melancholy in his voice, ‘You know … my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.’ —Henri J. Nouwen, Reaching out: the three movements of the spiritual life. London: Collins, 1976, p52.