Hey, Fellow Tribeless!
What's on your mind today? Out my window as I’m working, I’m curiously catching the squirrels scamper about my patio and backyard, caching nuts and seeds, storing fuel to survive the winter months ahead. And it got me thinking, in what ways do we spend time and energy scampering about to prepare for what’s coming ahead? And is it always to our benefit, or do we sometimes just waste our precious commodities? How can we discriminate between the two?
In deference to the squirrels rooting laboriously, I considered my weekly grocery shopping. I spend the better part of my Friday afternoons gathering food for the week, scampering from Trader Joe's to Casey’s, sometimes to Jewel, Cermak, Mariano’s, or Whole Foods just to find all the right ingredients for the days ahead. And most of the time, all ends well. My planned meals cook up without a hitch and our tummies are happy for another week. But then there are those times, times I’m sure you’ve all experienced at least once. The times when your plans fall terribly apart, something popped up and you don’t have time to cook that planned meal, you’re running late one night and, to eat at a reasonable hour, you heat up the frozen veg in lieu of cooking the fresh one you bought, you over-estimated and have more leftovers than you thought you would and now food is sitting in the fridge. And at the end of the week, something goes bad, something gets tossed or gobbled up by the garbage disposal, not quite a member of the family you intended to feed!
So, what does this all mean? We can’t plan for everything in life, we can’t prepare for every contingency, the land of ‘What-If’ is not a physical place where we can thrive. And we would drive ourselves insane trying to! But more importantly, we would be losing our precious time and energy from the present if we focus so much on planning for possible futures. There is one certainty in life, there is always going to be a winter, a time of hardship. But when we concentrate on preparing to survive the winter, we forget to embrace and revel in the summer, the times of Abundance and Joy.
Flexibility to live in and enjoy the present and leaving the future a surprise is Faith. Not a faith of religion or a god, but a Faith in Yourself and your Courage and your Strength and in the Wonderment that is Life! Life is always here to provide, and you are much stronger than you ever thought yourself to be!
Where might you be losing precious time and energy to the future? What would your life be like if you re-budgeted that time and energy to spend it on today? Make it happen; I'd love to see!