Finding Time - Making Time

I am once again amazed at how much time has passed since I've last written here. It's not that there haven't been events and thoughts to write about - it's just that I can't believe how quickly time passes when I allow myself to be swept away in the busyness of life.

It reminds me of something David Whyte wrote in his wonderful book The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America. See if you can relate to this:

Ten years ago . . .
I turned my face for a moment
and it became my life.

I've let way too much time go by without doing the things I really want to do and saying the things I really want to say. Here it's been 3 weeks ... but how many other things in my life have I let slip by? How many thank you cards have I not written? How many friends have I fallen out of touch with? How many good intentions do I have but don't act on?

There is a huge distinction between intending to do something and doing something with intention.

I've heard it said that you will never find time for anything. If you want time, you have to make it. How true.

What have you not done in your life because you just don't have the time? If not now, when?

So many of us believe - really believe - that we will become the person we know we are deep inside when 1) we meet the right person, 2) we make a million dollars, 3) the kids are in (insert one - grade school, junior high, high school, college), 4) we retire, etc., etc.

We wait to become what we really ARE until. We believe that if we HAVE a certain something, we will then be able to DO what we really want to do and only then will be BE happy.

What if we've got it all backwards? What if we act as if we already ARE happy? That will cause us to DO what we really want to do and we will realize that we really do HAVE everything we want and need? Sound too easy? Yeah, it probably is. We've spent our entire lives making everything very difficult. We've gotten in the way of our own lives.

We've heard over and over again that we can change our lives by changing the way we think about our lives. That probably sounds too easy. So go ahead and prove that wrong. After all, that's what we've been doing our whole lives - searching for ways we can prove that what we've been doing is the "right" way. And we're sick, and unhappy in our jobs, and unhappy with our families, and bored, and cynical and resigned. How is that working for us? What if we really can change our reality by the way we look at things? We're so bent on being RIGHT that we give up being HAPPY.

What do we have to lose by MAKING time for our friends, families, art, music, beauty, things we love in our lives? Might we really be able to get off the treadmill that just seems to keep speeding up? It might mean we have to shift our perspective a little bit - it might mean we have to give up being right about not having enough time ... about working with jerks ... about having crabby servers every time we go to a restaurant ... about always feeling sick and tired - and being sick and tired of it. We've created that reality - and we get what we're looking for.

What if it's true? What do we have to lose?

Let's not kill any more time or waste it or lose it. Let's try creating our reality by the way we cherish and celebrate and live the time we have. It's not enough merely to survive this lifetime ... let's THRIVE!