Instead of setting some goals for myself this year, I decided to take stock of my life. With everything I do, I ask myself why am I doing this? What is my main motivation? For instance, I might ask myself why am I cleaning the house today? No one is making me, so why do it? Is this really all I have to do today? It’s not like there’s bacteria growing under and between things. It’s not that I enjoy it that much. Do I do it because it’s expected of me? If someone sees it dirty, what might they think of me? This is the dialogue I have with myself a lot lately, and I’m not liking hearing what I’m saying.
If my main motivation of doing anything is to keep up this facade, this perfect person I want to display to the world, how will I ever know the real person inside? You might argue that becoming a better person is a good motivator. But, what if that ambition to be a better this or a better that makes us blind to how we’ve manipulated those around us? Getting what we want, in essence, has stolen away some really great relationships. Returning to the cleaning house analogy, what if I kept the cleanest house in town, but I’ve distanced my family, because I got mad every time something was set out of place?
I’m reminded of the question that brought me here. Why don’t I enjoy life more? Is it because I’ve filled it with a lot of things I think need to get done.
How many of us go through the day checking things off a list. How many of us have grown weary because we’ve followed the same list for so long? Grocery shopping on Monday, Bible study on Wednesday, date night with hubby on Friday, try to impress the boss today, make this month’s budget in order to have something to put in college fund, and so on and so forth. All those things are really good, but if we’re doing the same things the same way all the time, we could forget why we’re doing them. Have we forgotten that every day is a blessing, and we have some latitude as to which way it should go. You say you’ve never been good at navigation?
How about daydreaming? But isn’t that a waste of time. Try telling that to Isaac Newton, Florence Nightingale, Albert Einstein or Adele? All admit to daydreaming. So, what’s stopping you, except for that careful plan you laid out for yourself. You better be careful; life might pass you by.
This week I’m looking at the book of Ecclesiastes, and here’s what King Solomon, the smartest man ever had to say about life, “I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven; this burdensome task God has given to the sons of man, by which they may be exercised. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be numbered.”
A better question to ask myself before doing anything might be, “Does this have any eternal value? Or does this simply help make me a busy person?”
In the words of King Solomon, (I’m paraphrasing here) “It’s not the end of the world. Don’t sweat it!”
