Time

I just read this statement:  

“Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.”

And now I feel like someone has dun me over with a Mack Truck.  

Is this what causes my crippling anxiety?  

Is this why I can’t get enough of every second of my children?

Is this why I carry so much guilt for the moments that I spend alone – doing nothing?  

Is this why I feel like I have done so much, but not nearly enough in my 31 years? 

 

 

Learning….and Elephants

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!

 

I have spent my entire life immersing myself in learning.  From a very young age, I yearned for knowledge.  I loved going to school and looked forward to that time more than the weekends.  If I wasn’t studying, I was reading innumerable books.  Anything I could get my hands on.  I have always thirsted for that knowledge.  I was the child who loved school.  I was the teenager who read books while others were off doing whatever they were doing.  I was the collegiate student who took Calculus for fun (Yes you read that correctly).  

What does any of this have to do with elephants?  I find that now I am a thirty-something who is trying to learn how to eat this elephant that is life.  The elephant that is parenthood.  The elephant that is depression and anxiety.  The elephant that is trying to make it in my career.  The elephant that is trying to be a good wife.  The elephant that is trying to be a good friend.  

In younger years I would have thrown myself into learning.  Taught myself everything there is to know about the subject.  Become an expert.  But, no one has written books on how to eat an elephant, much less 5 elephants.  For now, I will keep eating and hope that, bite by bite, the weight of these elephants gets lighter.