Just a Thought
By Deborah Demander
Everyone I meet has a busy life. It seems like everyone is bustling around working, volunteering, and running non-stop.
Most days, I’m up by 5 a.m. and I don’t stop running until after 10 p.m. I’m not complaining, just noticing that everyone around me is as busy as I am.
At an early morning breakfast meeting, I asked a friend how he was doing.
“I’m really busy,” he replied. “Sometimes I wonder if every day is going to be a grind for the rest of my life.”
I agreed with him, but as I thought about it later, I realized that life doesn’t have to be a grind. We all have choices. We choose where to work, where to live, who to marry, what church to attend, what activities to be involved in.
Everything in your life is there as a result of choices you have made. If you don’t like where you are or what you’re doing, make a different decision. The effects of a decision stay in place until you make a different decision.
If you have made a decision and find that you don’t like where its taking you, perhaps it’s time to reevaluate.
I like having a busy life. I enjoy volunteering my time to make the community a better place, and I like my work, which generally casts me far and wide throughout the region. Last Wednesday found me driving to Kemmerer for an early morning meeting with the Governor, attending the Kemmerer Rotary Club meeting, then driving like a crazy woman down the interstate in my Subaru (yes, the same pig-mobile) to attend another meeting with the Governor and Uinta County officials. Once that was finished, I took pictures of an event in town, then attended a parking meeting.
But I didn’t complain, because I like to be busy. Well. I may have complained a little the next morning when my alarm went off, but overall it was a fun day. If I didn’t like to be busy, I would do something else.
Many people, when I ask how they are doing, reply with a heavy sigh and a roll of the eyes, “I’m sooo busy.”
We are all busy. If you don’t like being busy, do something different. It is okay to say no to things you don’t want to do, or things that don’t match your priorities. We often loose sight of what is important in our lives, and fill our days with things we hate doing.
Stop. Don’t fill your life with things you don’t like. Life is too short to be dismal. Your day ought to be an outward expression of who you really are. If your activities don’t accurately reflect who you are, then do something different. Life is a series of choices. Choose who you will be and how you will represent yourself by the activities you participate in and the people you surround yourself with.
If those things aren’t an accurate representation, then change them.
I know. Change is hard. We all have decisions to make about the kind of life we want to have. You can decide today who you want to be, what you want to do, and what you want to have.
If you don’t want to be busy, then do something else. Say no. Stay home. Relax. There are lots of people out there willing to step in and fill the void. Although change is difficult, it’s not as hard as living a disingenuous life.
Any decision you made can be changed. You don’t have to do something drastic, such as quit your job, but you can look first for smaller changes that feel better, and more in line with your priorities. Sometimes a small shift is all it takes to feel better about life.
Deborah, in Hebrew, means bee. I like to stay busy, like the bees in the garden working. But bees still take time to smell the flowers.
When you are inundated with work and activity, don’t get frustrated. Enjoy. And if you don’t enjoy, then stop and do something else. And whatever you are doing, wherever you are, take a hint from the bees, and pause in your busyness to smell the flowers.
Namaste friends