A Time Famine

Wow, great post Andy. I love the words to that song. It's funny you mentioned the "trying to do too much thing". In our usual fashion, you and I were on the same wave length last night .... scary, I know. I found myself with some free time, which doesn't happen very often. My student called to cancel our tutoring session and I found myself here with both boys asleep (another rare occurance) and no engineering jobs to do. Oh what to do with my time? I have a difficult time sticking with one thing at a time anyway and rarely ever have time to just pick what I "want" to do instead of which thing I "have" to do that is most pressing. So after about 30 minutes of running circles around myself reorganizing this and cleaning that I decided to sit and do one of the things I love the most ... knitting. But could I stay on one project? Of course not. I sat and read a knitting book for a few minutes then I started knitting Brody's Christmas stocking and then I worked on his sweater for a few minutes and then I worked on my sock for a few minutes and then I just had to stop myself. What in the world was I doing? Has my life gotten so busy that I can't handle two hours of peace and quiet doing something leisurely? Apparently so. I sat there thinking about how busy life gets and how we are living in the time of "doing too much". I sat there thinking how nice it would have been if I had lived two hundred years ago and all my worries would be watching the children while I cook stew over the fire and knit socks for the family. Oh how peaceful those times must have been. I'm sure they had their worries but life definitely ran at a slower pace.
After a little day-dreaming I picked up one of my favorite books that I turn to when I can't slow down. It's called "Everyday Serenity: Meditations for People Who Do Too Much" by David Kundtz. Each page has a quote and then a short discussion about the quote. In my usual way of never starting at the beginning of anything I just randomly turned to a page somewhere in the book. I was so struck by what I read being about exactly what I was thinking of that I marked the page and set it by the computer so that I could address it here. So I get up this morning and read your post ... and again I am struck! What is going on here? I'll share the post with you all and maybe you will be "struck" as well.

Taking Time to See
"Nobody sees a flower, really -- it's so small -- we haven't time, and to see takes time ..."
--Georgia O'Keeffe

"These are the days of the time famine," says Odette Pollar in her newspaper column aimed at helping people work smarter. She cites some interesting statistics. According to a Harris survey, the amount of leisure time enjoyed by the average American has shrunk 37 percent since 1973. In the same period, the average work week, including commute time, has jumped from fewer than 41 hours to nearly 47 hours, and in some cases up to 80 hours a week.

I like the term time famine, and starvation is certainly an appropriate analogy for our situation. Many of us are starved for time and we have a passionate desire to be fed. We are starving for those moments of solitude when we can just hang out, cleaning out a drawer or looking through old letters, with no pressure or guilt. Our starvation deprives us of the nutrition that those in-between times used to give us: a feeling of centeredness in our lives, of awareness of our spiritual needs and those of our families, a confident sense of self-knowledge.

Georgia O'Keeffe's words ring authentic as you look at her paintings of flowers. She spent many hours "doing nothing" with a flower. No time famine for her. Her artistic life in the desert was a statement against the idea. And we continue to benefit from the results.

In a famine -- at least in the best of situations -- those who have help those who have not. Thus a question presents itself: Where are you in the time famine, among the haves or the have-nots? Sometimes one, sometimes the other?

For have-nots: Today, stop and really look at a flower.
For haves: Help someone else to do the same.

Anyone out there not in the time famine? Speaking of which, I better close for now because i've got a lot of things to do today ... go figure!

And yes Andy, i'm definitely "digging this". :-) I just hope our readers are as well. And speaking of readers, check out Sandy's comment on my first post. She found the quote I was looking for. (Thanks Sandy!)

Until next time ...
~Celena