Running Rings around the Way it Used to Be

My daughters. The picture of childlike wonder.

It's been almost 2 months since I've written. I've meant to, but have just kept putting it aside. When I thought of writing, I'd tell myself, "Okay but I'll do it after I ________." Do you ever do that? You mean to do something, and then a day goes by, a week, a month, and then years.

I have a love/hate relationship with time. As a teenager, I was ALWAYS late. Pretty much everyone knew this. Friends would tell me to meet them a half hour earlier so I would get there on time (Right, Chris?). I was constantly trying to cram stuff in to my schedule, thinking, "I have time to do just this one more thing..." But we all know how this story ends. I ended up racing, annoying everyone in the process, and becoming increasingly anxious.

Aren't we all racing against the clock? I feel like this is more and more common as the "noise" in this world increases. With the world literally at our fingertips at any second, there's so much competing for our attention. I can't even imagine what this will be like for our kids when they are adults. It's always "go, go, go." And we celebrate people who can do it all. But no one really can. We end the day exhausted and frustrated, then wake up to do it again.

I just had my birthday, and it usually makes me sad. Not for the normal reason of getting older, but for the time that has passed and the time I feel I have wasted. I'll be 40 next year, and I've been reflecting on that for a couple years now. It's mind boggling to think the time I have spent worrying about what others think, trying to make others happy, and running around.

After losing my dad at a fairly young age, it hit home that we only have one chance. At first, I thought that meant we needed to do more. But I have recently realized that instead of hurrying around, trying to make up for lost time; we need to do the EXACT OPPOSITE. If we take time to be still, slow down, and truly enjoy life, our lives will be much richer.

Take a second and think about your earliest memories. A lot of mine include playing outside. Swinging on the swings, studying a caterpillar (sorry to the one I squished with my fingers- that was gross), rolling around in the grass, playing in the field behind my friend's house. As kids, we have time to discover, play, and study everything around us. Then as we grow older, we're told to hurry around and that's the way to succeed. But who exactly decided that?

What if we started going back to the basics? Maybe we need to get a bit of our childlike wonder back. I'm not saying we need go around squishing bugs and doing cartwheels in the yard (not sure I could actually manage one nowadays), but what if life is more about discovery and play? And what if we're really not supposed to stop as we grow older? If you take a second, even the most mundane thing can actually be really beautiful, like a flower growing out of the sidewalk. We all have the power to bring a little more LIFE into our lives if we just take a moment.

The song I've shared is from 1982, the year my husband was born. That doesn't seem long ago, but it has been a while. I would argue that our world is much more hectic since then. If you listen to the lyrics, they ring true today. These musicians, all much older, and some who have passed away, had the same desires then as we do now. Even 4 decades ago, people were wishing they could get more out of their lives, and we need that now more than ever. But the beautiful thing is that we can start doing that today.

And as they say in the song, "So much water moving underneath the bridge, let the water come and carry us away."

I'll make more time to write. Talk soon.

Hayley