I’m a busy girl. Too busy. I often think about how busy I am. I dislike the word busy. It conjurs up images in my mind of ants marching all in a line, heading somewhere (who knows where) just because all the other ants are doing it. I wonder if they ever think about why they’re all marching. Or if they just want to stop and sit in the shade and think about something other than the endless march they are part of. Or maybe they’d like to march the other way. Or put down the gum wrapper they’re carrying back to the hill.
I feel like an ant sometimes. Like this past week, for example. The fall season of lessons started up for me. I had 30 students come through the door over a period of four days, a family to feed, a young son to be a good mother to, a conference to plan for, recordings to finish, bills to pay, errands to run, friends to visit, phone calls to make, a husband to love and serve -- all good things, nothing out of the ordinary. But all together it made me feel like I was marching, marching, marching. And I find myself focusing on the time it’s going to take to do everything on my schedule and how tired I’m going to be when the day is done -- and I zap all the fun and joy out of all of it. So there I am, all exhausted and stressed and living for my next free day. Not in the moment at all. I’ve heard it said that “busy” is not a good thing, that busy is often the partner of stress and the enemy of peace and rest and sanity. So sometimes I try to fool myself and think that I just have a “full schedule.” The reality is that I’m really just busy. And probably need to learn something about balance. How do the ants do it? So this weekend I’m at the coast doing music for a women’s conference. I’m going to take a long walk on the beach and ponder how I can get some balance and still do all the things I need to do, how to filter out the things that aren’t important, treasure the 30 students that come through my door each week, (knowing they are busy too, and have chosen to spend some of their busy days with me), soak in every moment I have with my husband and son, and look at the glass half full for a change, no matter what the day looks like. And whenever I have a moment, I’ll stop marching, get out of the line, sit in the shade and ponder something nice. Be in the moment. And then I’ll get back to it with a renewed sense of purpose. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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