I found myself sitting out on my deck this morning looking at the beautiful blue skies, the freshly cut lawn of dandelions and clover, the forest of dead pine scattered with spruce and fir trees and fighting with the huge ‘to do’ list that kept trying to crash into my thoughts and take over. A couple of times already I had gotten up and gone back into the house to write down these all important tasks that needed to be done so I wouldn’t forget. My list has been so crowded that I’m not writing in tiny spaces in margins and between lines in order to squeeze things in so that I don’t have to take the time to start a whole new fresh list. If only I can get enough things crossed off, then I can rip off the page and start over again.
But then I look out over my lawn and ask myself the question, “So what if I didn’t do it all?” What would happen if I just didn’t do everything that seems so necessary on that list? Would the world fall apart? My mom is in ICU in a hospital 5000 km away and my dad and I have been talking about this question. They had been preparing to come in a couple of weeks for my daughter’s high school graduation and there is a lot to do to prepare for a trip. What if they just didn’t do it all? Would it really matter? What if I didn’t get everything on my ‘to do’ list done, but instead took some time to just ‘be’ today instead? I look out at the trees and weeds and ants in my yard and they don’t live by a list. They just go about doing what they do, unhurried and unstressed until I run the lawnmower over the ant’s nest. Then they scurry about for a few minutes in a panic until they realize that I’m gone and they go about adapting to the mess I’ve made in the same unhurried way they had been working before I so rudely interrupted.
How many things in our lives really matter so much that the world would stop if we didn’t do them? Sure, there are a lot of things on my list that will make things nice for someone, that will show love to someone, that will make something better for someone, that eventually need to be done in some way, but how often do we put pressure on ourselves that doesn’t need to be there? We, the children of the Protestant work ethic, seem to have the idea that exhaustion is next to Godliness. That is no more scriptural than cleanliness being next to Godliness, and probably less so.
I came in from the deck because of the mosquitoes, but perhaps I should take some more time out there. You know, I was actually getting to ask the question, “So what if I didn’t post a blog this morning?” Would the Record fire me? O yah! They don’t pay me! Maybe I need to go through the rest of my list and ask the same question for today and whittle that list down. Maybe I need to take a lesson from the dandelions and ants and reflect on what it means to live a little less hurried, a little less driven and realize that the world does not depend on how much of my list I get crossed off today.
