The key to making all tasks meaningful

I would love to say that my days are filled with exciting, important tasks that have a lasting impact on society and the world at large. That I could point to everything I’d done at the end of each day and say, “See? Look at all I have accomplished! Aren’t you so glad I was here?!”

Unfortunately, I find that at the end of most days, there is no tangible evidence that I have done anything at all with my day.

If I clean the entire house, top to bottom, while the kids are at school, it is destroyed again by bedtime. If I make a beautiful meal, it’s scarfed down instantly or, worse, thrown away (those ungrateful brats!). New dirty laundry appears faster than I can carry the clean laundry back upstairs, clean toilets last as long as the time it takes my boys to drink a glass of water, an hour spent reading to my children is forgotten the instant I need to make just one phone call, …do I need to go on?

Since the effect of everything I do seems so fleeting and unnoticed, it’s tempting to either stop doing it altogether (*note: don’t try this- it actually does get worse if you ignore it…I tried), or just resign yourself to never making an impact on the world past what you can barely remember yourself.

But I think I may have found a cure. A single trick that will make anything and everything we do during our day have meaning, impact, and joy. A single act that will keep every minute of our day unwasted.

Before beginning any task, I have started to ask myself the question, “Is there any way I could be helping someone, loving someone, while I’m doing this?” And the answer is almost always “yes.”

I’m learning that I don’t have to ignore my mundane, but necessary, routine…or complete it…in order to get around to the “important stuff” that actually lasts. They can be done at the same time.

Here are some of the questions I’ve asked myself this week:
While I’m cooking dinner for my family, could I make some extra to freeze for a future sick neighbor?
-Could I walk my child to school instead of drive in order to love the Earth?

-Could I get my exercise today by mowing and weeding my elderly neighbor’s lawn instead of just going for that run?

-When I clean the house today, could I pick all of the areas my husband most cares about instead of just the ones that drive me crazy?

-While waiting for my son to get out of baseball practice, could I write a quick note to my aunt?

-As long as I’m playing with my own child, could I call my neighbor and offer to watch her child, too?

-Can I ask my daughter to help me fold laundry so I can find out what’s bothering her today?

-Could I teach my son how to cook this meal as I’m doing it?

-Can I remember, and write down, what went wrong with this procedure so that I can help others avoid it in the future?

-As I’m waiting in this long line, could I cheer someone up?

If I can do this throughout my day, every day, then nothing I ever do will be meaningless or wasted. There still may be nothing tangible to "show" for my day, but hopefully there will at least be something at the end of it all to show for my life.

-TWM

Life in the Interruptions

As you can probably guess, I do not like it when people waste my time.

I put myself under a lot of pressure to be an ultra-productive mother, wife, housekeeper, neighbor, volunteer, employee, and citizen, and the only way I can get this accomplished is if I work FAST. I believe that 99% of the things I’m doing are important, honorable, unselfish. Good things, that need to be done.

And so I have my LIST. My “inbox”. My set of criteria for what I am supposed to accomplish each day that will prove to myself and the world that I am worthy of respect, responsibility, and good karma. Every day, my list is growing, and I love that feeling of “being on a roll,” when the day just opens up and allows you to amaze yourself with how much you can get done.

But then, along come the interruptions.

Little bundles of knees and elbows that sit in my lap and try to type along with me while I’m writing, just desperate for any attention and time they can garnish. Older, slower interruptions that want to chat in the grocery store line when I’m already running late. Tiny, invisible interruptions that invade our childrens’ bodies and give them a fever just bad enough to keep them out of school, one at a time of course, and wipe out entire WEEKS of scheduled meetings, workouts, and any chance of concentration.

And those are just the small interruptions. What about the bad medical diagnosis? The corporate layoffs? The terrible late-night phone call that changes everything?

How on EARTH am I supposed to get everything done that I’m supposed to under these conditions? If ONLY I could control everything around me, then I would amaze the world at what I would get done. I SWEAR if everyone would just GET OUT OF MY WAY and give me ONE HOUR, ONE WEEKEND, or better yet, ONE MONTH to get everything in order that I just KNOW I’m supposed to be doing, THEN I will be able to slow down and listen to you, and play with you, and spend time with you, and…love you…like I should be doing now. I’m so sorry.


Life IS in the interruptions.

In the end, I’m not going to be judged by how far I got through my own fabricated inbox, but how I dealt with the universe’s interruptions. Whenever someone or something enters into my day unannounced, it’s arrogant and ignorant of me to automatically assume that what I had planned was more important.

Yes, the job must be finished, dinner (in some form, at least) must be cooked, and you will find me running down the highway naked and screaming if the house is not eventually picked up, but that should not be what my day is about. That’s just the boring, mundane stuff. The stuff that I can come up with on my own.

People, and opportunities, are the ones that interrupt the routine. And that’s something I don’t want to miss out on anymore.

I don't want on my tombstone, “She kept a good house.”

-TWM

Thinking Twice about Who Gets My Money

Today, I did something I normally hate doing- I paid retail for a hardback book. It was the latest “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” for my son, and though I could have probably held out for it to come to the library, I decided to splurge. My son will be thrilled, but honestly, the thought of his happy face wasn’t what tipped me over the edge in pulling out my wallet- it was the store selling the book.

This adorable, boutique children’s bookstore struggling to stay afloat moved into our neighborhood a few years ago, replacing a God-awful “American Opinion” store filled with skin-heads and secret late-night meetings.

This store deserves my money.

In the past few months, since my husband’s company shut down, I have, for the most part, spent as little money as humanly possible. But when I do decide to splurge, I am trying to make sure the person, or institution, getting our hard-earned (or hard-SAVED, now) dollar is worthy of it. That it is the kind of business we believe needs to still be around a year from now.

We’re all facing the conundrum of needing to save money for our own private benefit, but spend money in order to keep our economy alive. To make peace with this, we need to remember both sides of that coin with every purchase: what, and who.

This is the only way we’re going to like the way our world looks when the dust settles.

-TWM