Wow. Another year come and gone. Remember when you were a kid and the adults always talked about how time just flew by? “Where does the time go?” was the perpetual rhetorical question. And as a girl, I was just puzzled and perplexed. I didn’t feel like time was flying by… but oh how I understand now! Often I just want things to slow down. Days, weeks and years fly by and yet Obama is still in office (had to get it out of my system)… Ahem.
The funny thing is my own kids seem to comment on it as well these days. My eldest has remarked, “I can’t believe it’s Christmastime again!” With more incredulity than excitement. My youngest, when told his friend was having her annual birthday bash at the beach park said, “Oh, is it her birthday AGAIN?” So it’s good to know that it’s not just me feeling like we need to slow the merry-go-round down. [On a side note, my dad could spin the merry-go-round so fast I thought I was going to be sick. I had a love/hate relationship with that playground apparatus, which appears to be of no concern as it is found at nary a playground these days.]
I read another blog once, where the author submitted that the way to slow things down was to be fully present. And I must say I think she’s on to something. We’re so into multi-tasking these days and the truth of the matter is that by and large, we’re not getting twice as much done but getting more things done halfway. There are exceptions. I am composing this blog as my washing machine chugs away. I love appliances. I am thankful for them. I often thank the Lord for my dishwasher and other such conveniences. But I know friends who relish washing dishes by hand because they say that it gives them opportunities to work with their child, have some much needed conversation and enjoy the fun of making dirty things clean again. It sounds so poignant and meaningful that I had thought about trying it myself but have yet to do it. I see their point though and wonder if I’m missing out on something sweet…
Ah conveniences, created to make more time for us. More leisure time. But it seems that rather than take advantage of that time for sweet repose, we fill it with activity–piano lessons, hockey, soccer etc. Not that anything is wrong with any single activity. It’s just the glut we seem to feel that we need to make our children “well-rounded”that often infringes on the luxury of just being. Just thinking. Just hearing the still, small voice of the Lord. We drown it out the quietness, fill it with the radio or movies or facebook and then we wonder, where has the time gone?
I’m pretty sure that those in pioneer days felt the days race by also but their days were probably filled with just necessary activities–necessary to survival–farming and housework. But I think the advantage to such “good ol’ days” was that the work was teamwork. Family work. If something didn’t get done, everyone felt it. There was responsibility to each other. Kind of like my friend’s kids who wash dishes together. But it went beyond that to the community. Sewing bees, harvest time, barn raisings… I think we lost something of togetherness with the disappearance of the agrarian society. Does it sound like I want to be Amish? Not quite, but there is an appeal to simplicity that while it may not lengthen our days, it might makes us feel that the activity was so much more purposeful because it centered around relationships and reality. Not just a screen and an image.
I’m not completely anti-technology; it does have some really good uses and some things I enjoy such as locating my kids via my smart-phone or texting them to ask them to please pick up some milk (yes, I’d rather have a cow if I didn’t have to get up early to milk it!). But I really think we as Americans, or as members of Western civilization are missing the mark. What are we trying to accomplish with all this busyness anyhow? Does it make us feel important to talk of all our hustle and bustle? Or is it hiding our insecurities? I guess those two questions are really one and the same.
This year, if you make a resolution, how about making it to slow down and live each day on purpose. Not rushing all over town or trying to be super parent or the best best friend. But just enjoying our time with our spouses, kids–coworkers or clients. Giving them our full attention. Praying we will see each interaction as God-ordained. Praying for the ability to see them as God does and to encourage them with our words. I wonder if somehow, being fully present in each day, wouldn’t make us feel a little calmer, a little more peaceful and little more content than trying to be someone we are decidedly not. The only worth we have is in Him and yet He is often the last to receive any of my time.
2016… a year of possibilities. Let’s make it last as long as we can.
Decidedly Different 