Escape
Plan
“We
spend more time developing means of escaping our troubles than we do solving
the troubles we’re trying to escape.”
David
Lloyd
If you
were guessing, how much time every day do you spend fighting doing what needs
to be done? I have it in my head that something must be wrong with me if I can’t
do everything there is to do each day even though I don’t want to do most of it.
I still think like a twenty-year-old but I’m somehow living in an old woman’s
body. I wonder to myself, why can’t I do that? (Climb up a ladder and clean out
my gutters, for instance) I used to do that! Tasks like weed my garden, mow the
yard, prune, cook, freeze, make preserves, mop the floors, and on and on…why
can’t I do those now when I used to do them even when I worked full time? And
worse, I still try to do some of them and hurt myself with the effort—as though
I have a memory lapse in which the passage of time has not occurred. I wonder
if you do that too.
On the other hand, some
part of my psyche now rebels at being expected to do things I don’t want to do.
There is a damsel within who stomps her foot and says, “I shouldn’t have to do
that! I won’t!” Like a petulant teenager, she pooches out her lips and turns
her back on the tax prep covering her desk, or the bill paying, or emptying the
dishwasher. She goes and plays with fabric and thread and hours later, wonders
why her house is such a mess; the breakfast dishes are still in the sink,
because the dishwasher still has not been emptied.
My dad had an old country
saying: “Get ‘er done!” He held himself to a higher-than-normal work ethic. He
did not shirk his responsibilities and did not tolerate those who did.
Especially his kids—we towed the line, or things got ugly. So now, I berate
myself for playing instead of working. Old ideas and ingrained behaviors are
hard to break. We spend a lot of time with niggling thoughts we push back as
long as possible just so we can do what we want to do and postpone the guilt.
John Maynard Keynes said,
“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from
old ones.” It’s a conundrum. Life is difficult. But here’s the thing: it
doesn’t have to be so hard. We can let ourselves off the hook now and then. We
can plan our day so that the things that must be done get done, and there is
still time for the things we want to do. Only a little bit of tweaking is
necessary.
How long does it really
take to unload the dishwasher? Set aside two hours a day for necessary tasks.
But then, play! My son’s boss has a strict rule that you don’t take work home. Work
hard while you are there, but when you get into your car in the evenings, don’t
look back. Go home. Enjoy your family. Have fun. Even if you are retired, this
is good advice because our old routines and rules of conduct don’t abate just
because we are no longer gainfully employed. We hold our own noses to the grindstone
and wonder why we’re tired at the end of the day.
Take a breath. Look at
your day and see when there is time for work and when there’s time for play.
They are equally important to a well-lived life.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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