So I ask myself what I have learned about this in four years, and I am glad to say that here are several things I know a bit deeper now than I did then:
1. Busyness moves me out of the zone of seeing the little things: breathing the air, gazing on the sky. Well, I still breathe the air, but I don't even
notice that. When I load my schedule, dovetailing appointments, deadlines, and chauffeuring teens, I sprint through the moments. I live for the future, a nebulous intangible promise of rest delayed by this frenetic effort of mine to keep all the irons in my fire equally hot.
2. I'm in charge of not just what I put on my schedule, but how much I allow that self-imposed merry-go-round of life to pressure me with oughts, shoulds, and guilt for less-than-brilliant follow-through. No one else can slow my merry-go-round down. Just me.
3. No matter how often I find myself in one of these times when I'm moving too fast, feeling out of touch with myself and wondering how I got there, I can start over. I can slow down. Rework my schedule to include more moments to smell the roses, sip the coffee, laugh with loved ones. If I scale back on the activities that are crowding out these small and oh-so-vital-to-me wonders, I will be much more able to live in the present.
These moments are gifts. But we'll whiz right by them in our busyness if we're not mindful. I'm in the process (once again) of re-working my calendar to include a lot more of these moments; and if your merry-go-round of a schedule is moving way too fast, I invite you to join me!