It shouldn’t have taken longer than a day or two to contemplate the driving pace I’ve been maintaining since January, slap myself on the hand for not putting into practice the balance lessons I’ve learned over the past 5 or 6 years, and then spending the 7 days before school starts taking it easy, recalibrating and reminding myself that there are only 24 hours in a day.
But, instead, I find myself losing it.
Extending the addict analogy from the “Is it Possible to Pursue our Passions and Live a Simple Life” piece I posted a couple of days ago, I feel like I am in work detox, replete with headaches, racing thoughts and a pretty sound bout of the blues. Why is it that we allow ourselves to get so caught up in life’s “doing” that we forget the importance of just “being”? How is it that we can learn these lessons time and time again, yet fall right back into the same damaging behavior traps?
The easy answer is just to do less. Say “no” more frequently and keep things light. I love that answer. Living the chill life is a dream. Unfortunately, that is not always an option. Sometimes life, work, family, community needs and calling converge in a way that fills the plate beyond capacity and we are forced to carry a heavy load.
They say in recovery that doing things the way we’ve always done them and expecting a different result is, at best, a recipe for frustration and, at worst, the path to repeating old, self-damaging behaviors. As I sit here navigating the fine line between winding down and unraveling, I know that the pace of the world is unlikely to change to suit my needs (and that it would be incredible arrogance to expect it to.) So I guess it’s time to get out of my own head and start seeing what it is that I can learn from this one-step-forward-two-steps-back so I can try to do things different next time.
I guess that’s the beauty of grace, mercy and second chances…
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