Friday, June 20, 2008

‘Europeans watch the time. Here, we have time to watch.’

I read that Moroccan saying yesterday and was seriously convicted by it. I have often thought about my obsession with productivity, inherited in a straight line from my distant Puritan ancestors and further encouraged by my years in the American school system. Getting stuff done is the goal of our life; it makes me feel valuable and important. And there are good things about that mentality- we are an amazingly productive society, which has given birth to all sorts of nifty inventions like computers and Netflix and made them easily accessible to the most frugal of housewives.

But of course, they are many, many problems with our (my) obsession with hurrying through life with one eye on the clock and the other eye on our to-do list. Mostly, we miss out on life. I really like the idea of sitting on the porch with my coffee and banana bread, idly watching the garden grow and chatting with the neighbors. But then I start thinking of the filthy bathroom (Yikes! I have to clean that today!) and dinner needs to be done and oh crap, I’m so far behind on the kids’ school paperwork and don’t even mention youth group stuff…and there goes my idyllic summer evening. How do we get out of this mess of over-achieving and busy-ness? I just don’t know. But I’m working on it.

‘Time is our servant here. We are not the servants of Time.’

1 comment:

On a fools hope said...

I am with ya...I just forced myself to put some things off till tommarrow so that I could spend some one on one time with my daughter today. Sounds aweful doesn't it? By the way Httie says you look beautiful in your picture:)