Tear Up the List

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How many people find it really hard to relax? As I was watching Iron Man 3 the other night I felt myself thinking how lazy I am. Here is this guy who never sleeps, builds extravagant machinery on a perpetual basis and flies all over the world fighting the bad guys. And here I had slept in that morning...

Yet as I was talking to a friend today at lunch, she commented on how much energy I have and how insanely busy my schedule is. Apparently, booking a lunch date with me is next to impossible. When I told her how lazy I have been feeling lately, she almost fell off her chair laughing! Her response?? "You haven't even been able to sit still through our hour long meal!!"

How many of us are working harder than we have ever in our life and yet feel like we are not doing enough? When there is a free hour in our day, we wonder what we are missing; what we have forgotten to get done. When I have no immediate tasks in front of me, I often find myself searching my mental "to-do" list frantically for what's next. What happened to embracing those free pockets of time and just living life? To be honest, there is always something I should be getting done, a job I can create for myself to fill the time slot, but is that really the best use of that time? 

What I have discovered is that the more we work, the more we have to do. When we become so immersed in working to "accomplish" something, it seems we add things to the list faster than we can cross things off. If your list is always getting longer,  how can you ever gain a sense of completion? Instead, living by our list,  it is easy to berate ourselves for the things we haven't yet accomplished. Or to look ahead at all the things we have to get done; living for a tomorrow or next week, which frankly, may not come. 

So on this holiday Monday, I am setting a new motto:

Tear up the list, 
Forget yesterday's missed
Or tomorrow's must do's
Because today is the day that counts
Live it, and live it well.

...and now that I've written my piece, I'm going to sit on the beach!

Comments

  1. Lynn22 May 2013 at 18:27

    What wisdom. I am glad that you are still very young and have grasped this. Don't let the precious present moment slip away on you. You will never be content otherwise.

    ReplyDelete

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