Taking a break from real life
My life is a never-ending To Do list. I don’t remember exactly when this happened. It hasn’t always been this way. What’s the deal? Is this the inevitable reality of a productivity-obsessed world? Or is it simply a matter of too much personal transition — we had a house move, career transitions for both hubby and me, and adopted two cats all in the space of one year.
Whatever the case, everywhere I turn there is another task to be completed — and just when I think I can tick off one of those items from the never-ending To Do list, it turns out the delivery doesn’t arrive as planned and it takes seven phone calls to locate the missing palette of garden furniture…and one of the received items is broken and must be replaced….then two minutes later we discover the front gate is sticking on the ground because the roots of a large cedar have displaced the driveway bricks…then we learn the intercom wire got inadvertently cut during a gardening project…but there’s no time to fix either of these annoyances because someone at work has called in sick right just as I’m about to launch a major campaign.
To do, to do, to do…
An incessant barrage of things to do at work and at home, each of which requires hours of admin, phone calls, and persistent follow-up to be resolved. When I expressed frustration about this seemingly endless cycle of chores to my husband yesterday morning he cynically replied: “Yes, but that’s real life”. (He is also at the end of his patience quotient these days with all things broken everywhere we look.)
It got me thinking over an ensuing joyless breakfast, in which I couldn’t help but anticipate the pile of bills to pay and documents to file (for which there is only time to tackle on a Sunday morning): Is this really it? Is this how I want to spend the rest of my short time on earth — drowning in a sea of To Do lists, worry and distraction?
It isn’t all dismal, of course. The so-called first world problems aside, our new house is a fantastic adventure, we are both healthy and have interesting jobs with a relatively high degree of autonomy, and enough tenacity and resilience to tackle anything that may come our way in the unpredictable new economic world of downsizing and outsourcing. Even so, I can’t help but remember when I dreamed of more. Not the more of stuff: the more of unbridled joy and possibility. There was a time when I lived every day with insatiable curiosity and naive courage to just go for it.
Tapping into a free spirit
She is a vibrant memory, the free spirit who led me to backpack across Australia alone at the age of 20; to boldly cold-call the organizers of Fashion Cares and realize a childhood dream of working backstage on that show; to produce a play without any professional experience; and to pick up and leave my budding nest of stuff a few years later to move halfway around the world with no more than two suitcases – in a quest to discover another culture firsthand and complete a degree so far from my comfort zone that at first my friends didn’t believe I was serious.
Somewhere along the way this free spirit was subsumed with Responsibility. As I have grown up, both professionally and personally, the stakes have increased. The cost of a mistake has larger repercussions now than it did five years ago. The implications of a move are substantial. The perks of a steady day job are numerous and its trappings become part of the routine. Plus there’s another person — and now two cats — to consider. All in all, it’s tougher to dream when the fear of losing it all pervades. Or is it?
Choosing a different reality
Really what it comes down to is a matter of perspective (as my husband later reminded me after a few more hours of my sulking about the futility of it all). For those of us lucky enough to live in a relatively peaceful society, life is more than a series of chores — it’s a series of choices. We can choose to accumulate things or to live unencumbered, trusting that the universe (and our resourcefulness) will provide. We can choose to prioritize our work or to put family and friends first. We can choose to buy a house with a garden that needs maintaining or to couch-surf and live out of a backpack. Neither path is right or wrong, but it comes with implications. We must embrace these choices — or else change path.
Ultimately, it’s up to us to choose how we will spend our time in this life; and how we will see our day-to-day grind / blessings. What I know is that with time passing so quickly, I choose to embrace what is best about being alive.
I’d rather live every day of the rest of my life with the spirit I feel when I slap on a 1980s dance playlist and rock it out in my living room…dancing with every last ounce of my soul, as though nobody were watching, until all of that responsibility is shaken out and there’s nothing left to do but laugh until I can’t laugh anymore.
(Feature photo: Heather / flickr)
