Do you ever feel like the best thing that could happen to you is to have about five extra hours in the day? I swear the older I get the less time there seems to be in one single day! It doesn't really matter if I get up at four in the morning or six, or if I go to bed at ten or stay up until midnight, no matter what I do there's always at least one thing that gets left undone in my day. Lately it seems that the first thing to get bumped from my to do list has been this blog:) This is where I am supposed to insert the part about how that's all going to change now and I'll be posting more frequently, but what's the point in doing that when I know it's not true!
So where does the time go? I can remember when I was a kid the days seemed like they would never end. We would get more fun stuff done in one day then I could in a week now! Of course when your a kid the only thing you have to worry about cutting into your time is meals, school, and maybe a few chores, and the school didn't really cut into your time cause all your friends were at school so whatever fun stuff you were doing at home just got carried over to the playground. There is a dog park near our house that borders a school and during our last trip up there a couple weeks ago Kelli and I were reminiscing about how when the bell rang at the end of recess you would all agree to meet right back where you were and pick up the game you were playing where you left off next recess. Then there was too much time in the day because the duration between recesses felt like an eternity!!
Now that we're all grown up, and have jobs and responsibilities, those days of having nothing but time during a day are long gone. Sometimes it seems like if we can race through a day and accomplish the bare necessities of what needs to be done we've won some sort of prize! No matter what we do we just don't have enough time in the day, and we don't even have kids!! I can't even imagine what our time would be like if we were trying to juggle a third schedule under the same amount of daily time! Someday I suppose we may have to do that though and just like every other parent before us I'm sure we will be able to make it work, it will just feel like we have even less time in the day for the stuff we want to do:)
My question is simple, even though as adults we have houses, jobs, and kids eating up all of our free time, which leaves us with very little of it to do the things we enjoy doing, but why should it stop us from experiencing the same joy we felt as a kid right now? I don't see why we shouldn't be able to find that perfect balance where our daily responsibilities and our personal joys are not fighting for each valuable hour we have in a day but sharing our time, making the most of each one. I think a good balance would be as simple as for every four hours of doing things not on our fun list, you all know what they are, we should reward ourselves with one full hour of a fun thing! Pretty simple right? That means if you work an 8 hour day, followed by taking your child to baseball practice for 2 hours, then you have 2 1/2 hours of free time to get that round of golf in on the weekend!:)
Now we all know in the real world a scenario like that just simply wouldn't work, but it sure is fun to think about. And if we think about it that way then we realize how much the inner kid in all of us just gets pushed aside, allowing the daily chaos of everyday life take over. I know as much as you do that you can't just use a stupid hourly reward system like I just described, but if we actually think about the things in our life that we don't get to in a day, a week, or a month, then we'll stay mindful of the fact that we simply have to find some time to enjoy those aspects of our life or the time just goes by even faster! It's funny how that works, you work harder to try and have some free time and at the end of the day you have less time, not to mention the free time you do have is spent on the couch or in bed recharging for the next day!
All I'm saying is we could all take a page out of the Europeans book, they have seemed to master this balance of responsibility and pleasure quite well! I'm not saying we should all take the entire month of August off every year, but I think we could all do a better job of having more fun in our lives, I know I could! It's far too easy to get caught up in the rat race of life, we have to work equally as hard at not letting that inner child completely disappear.
Remember, meet me back right here next recess and we'll keep playing!!:)
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