quit prioritizing life, and make living a priority...

I have been staying nights at my mother’s house for the last couple of weeks since she was released from the hospital. It makes my schedule a little hectic, but I’d actually argue that I have been sleeping a little better. I basically go straight from work to my afterschool activity of the day (Mondays Steel Drum Lessons, Tuesdays Yoga then Fiddle Lesson, etc…

Then I stop at my house, organize laundry and whatever household chores need done, grab some food to cook, head to my moms, make dinner, b.s. for a minutes or 10 lay down, and I am out. I wake up around 5am to head to the gym and repeat. I wish I had more awake time to spend at home, but it seems I am always in a hurry to get to the next stop.

This morning the alarm didn’t go off on my phone so I woke up around 6:15. I thought about just sleeping in and going to work and skipping my workout, then decided that if I packed quickly I could still squeeze in a little dead lifting before work.

 I brushed my teeth, packed my work clothes, put on my gym clothes and was about to head out the door when my mother walked out. She has been waking up when I do in the mornings pretty regularly. She comes to check to see if I have my lunch packed, if I am eating breakfast, that I am not wrinkling my clothes, basically what she has done for the better half of her life raising 7 children at an average rate of 1.5 years apart, and then she got a little break for about 15 years and oopsie daisy I came along followed by one of my nephews that ended up living with us and being raised by her as well.

Amongst her checklist she began talking about a few other things, mostly things we had talked about the night before and I semi listened for a bit as I made sure I had everything and then continued on my hustle bustle to rush out the door. As I got to the door, something hit me and I started to think about things. I ended up stopping in that door way and talking for about 20 minutes before I eventually made it out the door. I had to stop at the gym v/s going straight to work as I had not yet showered anyway. Got my 30 minute workout in and got to work 20 minutes late after my shower.

I guess I am fairly fortunate to be in a place where you can pull off an occasional slip up and come in late, but the more I think about it the more the entire situation seems wrong. Why our lives should be so driven by these deadlines and stop points. By “having” to be places at specific times, and rushing to hit specific points and places. It seems so odd to someone who steps out of the machine to watch all the cogs turning and realize everything that people are letting pass by. What drives us to this system? What benefits us from it. We work these 9 to 5 jobs (some much more than that) where for a lot a big chunk of that time just constitutes of being there and not of actually needing to produce anything.

We rush off to do our 1.5 hours of mandatory exercise to eat our pre-packaged box meals in 20 minutes so we can get home in time to sit in front of the television for our 2 to 4 hours of mandatory watching other people actually have lives before going to bed and repeating tomorrow. Out of this what are our main gains. Yes we get food, shelter, clean water which are good and we couldn’t live without, but are all these hours spent away from the things that actually matter really necessary to get those?

And really we spend more of the money we earn on materialistic things that are not as important. We buy these oversized and over priced houses that we only ever really use a quarter of the space in (other than storing the other meaningless stuff we don’t use that we wasted money on). We have to have the latest and greatest cars to show off to our neighbors and coworkers as we drive to and from our check in points in this systematic process we call life. I guess perhaps it’s the televisions that are now the size of our living rooms that we can watch others emulate having lives on that make it worth it. I really don’t know or claim to have the answer.

I am not using this as my typical soap box to talk about the woes of the world as much as I am just expressing my honest sadness that so much time is wasted marching through the system and that way less than should be is actually spent living. This Saturday I plan on spending the majority of my day just chilling out in the woods and interacting with mama nature as we haven’t been getting the bonding time that our relationship needs. Sunday I am taking my mom to church as I promised her I would when she got home from the hospital. And every day when the situation arises where I can chose to help or interact with someone or rush off to my next check point, I am going to do my best to choose the latter.

 Perhaps some folks may get mad because I am late here and there, but I’m going to set my priorities more to enjoying and living the moments than to trying to get somewhere. As in the end what are we all rushing off to, I mean we are all blessed or cursed with the same fate depending on how you look at it, and for me I think now is as good of a time as any to start focusing more on the moments, and enjoying the short time that I have here.