We wear our busy schedules like a badge of honor; committed to twelve committees, room mother, kids on several soccer teams, participating in after school activities, music classes and cooking.
We are at every event and everywhere all at once.
We are frantic; we are on the phone; we are in our cars; we check our email while we help with homework run a load of laundry and cook dinner all at once.
We work and work and work some more.
We get one vacation a year and we are so tired and exhausted that it’s hard to have a good time.
We aren’t happy with our busyness. We don’t love our busyness but we do it anyway because we don’t want to get behind.
We don’t want to be out of shape or miss out on the latest activity and we don’t want our kids not to get in THAT school or be second best ever.
When was the last time you asked someone what they were going to do this weekend and they said something like, “Just sit in silence replenish my soul and watch my kid smile.”
I know…never.
Life is full of distracting detail and before you know it the distracting detail has taken up twenty years of our lives. Don’t keep making plans for “someday soon” because your “someday soon” may come sooner than you think.
My Dad died when he was fifty years old; “someday soon” was sooner than we thought and if any good came out of his early death it is just this:
He is the reason I walk into cold oceans and try to run six-minute miles.
He is the reason I do things backwards and upside down and will bet it all on the fourth horse in the sixth race.
He is the reason I don’t give two craps about what the general public says about me my kids my husband my immediate family or my friends.
He is the reason I have always tried to put family first even when it meant we had to miss out on other things.
I’m just sorry he had to give up his life for me to begin to realize how to live one.
Life is not a race. You don’t get a reward for crossing off the most things on your to-do list and even if the world around you is spinning like a top with various accomplishments and certificates of completion and honors and certificates and awards doesn’t mean you have to move with it.
Back off the calendar and breathe.
Spend some time doing nothing but enjoying your kids, your partner, your friends or yourself and if you’re too busy for that then you’re too busy.
About Rebecca Suder