Changing How I Live
It’s 2024 and time for new resolutions. What needs to change?
As I work on this post, I am eating breakfast while I check my phone for emails. Music is playing, as I stretch my sore knee and type another sentence. The day is rushing by as my mind jumps from thought to thought. I won’t feel happy until this post is published. This busyness has a familiar pattern.
Business and Busyness
I have worked hard all my life. When I retired from my science career, I became a full-time art student. After my BFA, I began a career in art.
For a decade I immersed myself in the art business. I built a portfolio, developed a niche, and made lots and lots of paintings. I networked, marketed and sold my art. It was (and is) stressfully satisfying. I have always been busy.
Creating Time
Over the decades I prioritized efficiency and speed to create more time for productivity.
I multitasked everything I could. I planned breakfast when I showered, evaluated traffic when I ate and theorized science as I commuted.
I juggled 3 or 4 activities simultaneously. I would read a book, listen to music, look after the baby, and do yoga.
Multitasking was a carrot for saving time and completing my ‘to do’ list.
I rushed through everything I could. No time to waste! Why walk when you could run? I learned to speed read and paint fast. I crammed my day with frenetic activity.
I set goals, some small, some large, some unattainable. My happiness depended on these markers of success. I delayed any gratification to only the highest outcomes. Pain was part of the gain. Happiness depended on success.
Rushing Roulette
While I was highly productive in reaching goals. I had a problem: my mind was always somewhere else and one step ahead. The destination was my top priority and much was lost in this preoccupation.
The future was my focus, and the present always seemed a distraction and not a place to linger. I regret the moments I never savoured. I didn’t stop to hear my son’s laugh or enjoy my dog’s playfulness. I had been gambling the present for some unreachable future. I still am gambling away the present.
If happiness was the destination, the satisfaction was short lived. As quickly as one goal was attained, new ones were set. The train headed for a new destination before I could appreciate where I was. I was always on my way to somewhere else.
Limited
Carl Sandburg
I am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches
holding a thousand people.
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the
diners and sleepers shall pass into ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he going and he answers: “Omaha.”
Getting Off the Train
I realize I have been on the express train to Omaha most of my adult life. I don’t want to take that train anymore. I look out the window and see life flashing past as a blur as I wait for Omaha to come into view. Then what?
Something big is missing. Satisfaction or contentment? It’s time I resolve to change how I live.
“… To the mortal man
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we’re gliding down the highway
When in fact we’re slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away”
Paul Simon- Slip Sliden Away
Resolving to Change
I have made my happiness and satisfaction depend on future destinations. Getting off the express train doesn’t mean my journey is over. I need to change my concept of living. I no longer need to be so efficient or accomplished. I want to find a slower heartfelt trail- where I can smell the honeysuckle.
I want unstructured time. I want curiosity without regard to commercial sales. I want to paint portraits, carve wood, and make coloured glass bottles. I want to mess around.
I need to change my lifelong habits of rushing and multi-tasking my life.
Can I make the present more important than the future? Is it the journey itself that counts?
I have been telling myself “I will be happy when I get there’.
Maybe I need to say ‘I can be happy while I am getting there.”
I need to find out.
I am being driven forward into an unknown land.
The pass grows steeper and the air colder and sharper.
A wind from my unknown goal stirs the strings of expectation.
Still the question- Shall I ever get there?
There, where life resounds,
A clear pure note
In the silence
Dag Hammarskjold
