Real action or reaction?

If you watch your life carefully you will discover quite soon that we hardly ever live from within outwards; instead we respond to incitement, to excitement. In other words, we live by reflection, by reaction. Something happens and we respond, someone speaks and we answer. But when we are left without anything that stimulates us to think, speak or act, we realize that there is very little in us that will prompt us to action in any direction at all. This is really a very dramatic discovery. We are completely empty, we do not act from within ourselves but accept as our life a life which is actually fed from the outside; we are used to things happening which compel us to do other things. How seldom can we live simply by means of the depth and the riches we assume that there is within ourselves." -- Bloom, Anthony. Beginning To Pray. Paulist Press, New York. 1970 pp.38-39.

I have nothing useful to say if I have not been silent. I have nothing to give if I have not first humbly received from above.