Tag Archives: adults

The TIME of My Life

DSC_0756“You may delay, but time will not.” –Benjamin Franklin

Hello friend,

It is Birthday Week at my house! My son turned five a couple of days ago, and this week my daughter will turn seven. They are super-excited, of course. They have been talking about this week for months and months. “How old am I now, Daddy???” “You are four and one-fourth.” “How old am I NOW, Daddy???” “You are four and one-third.” On and on we go, all through the year. Because to them, a month is like a year, and a year is like FOREVER. They cannot wrap their beautiful little minds around having to wait a whole year for something. It sounds like torture! So, I started thinking the other day—you know, when my son was four and three hundred sixty-four three hundred sixty-fifths–how differently we view Time as we progress through it.

Kids have an amazing connection to the Now. If you never mentioned to them the idea of something occurring tomorrow or next year or when they are grown-up, they would never bother fretting about the future the way we adults do. They would just stay happily in the moment and flow with it. They stay totally connected with their current process, and then they shift gears immediately if someone suggests something more appealing. They don’t battle with Time like the adults around them. They live in the precious present. If you jar them with the prospect of doing something “later”—especially a whole year later—they cannot stand it.

We adults laugh at their anguish at the mere thought of holding out for a year, as we know how quickly Time marches on in our lives. We seem to blink and five years have passed. But think about it: relative to the total length of our lives, Time should be perceived differently. I have lived more than EIGHT TIMES as long as my son. One year is 20% of his life! Telling him he has to wait another year to go to the lake cabin with his cousins—his favorite event of the year—is the equivalent of telling me I have to wait 8 ½ years to go. That really is torture! I see now why they cannot fathom the idea of waiting until Christmas to get that forgotten item from the birthday list. That is FIVE MONTHS away after all, or 3 ½ years in my world. This new calculus for the perceived length of Time’s passage is totally enlightening to me. I am actually starting to feel pretty bad about not getting him that other birthday gift now!

I look at adults—myself included—and see how our time slips by. I don’t know if it is because of this calculus and the stretching of time as we age, or perhaps it is laziness and apathy, but whatever it is, we certainly have a tendency to watch it slide by. In some situations, the speed of Time passing is just what it is: it roars by even when we are savoring it to the fullest. In this vein, I think most specifically about raising kids. Every parent of older kids I have ever talked to tells me how unbelievably fast their children’s youth flew by. They say this whether they took it all in or not. I already feel that with my own kids. I like to think it is just a case of “Time flies when you are having fun.”

In other ways, though, I feel like we adults are guilty of letting our time slip by, of allowing the years to get away from us. I think particularly of people I know who are in jobs that are neither enjoyable nor fulfilling, and yet they have been doing the same job seemingly forever. Maybe the paycheck and security for the family seem more important than fulfillment. And hey, maybe those things are more important for a while. But then the kids are gone and nothing changes. They poke their head out one day and realize that they buried themselves years ago and have been going along unconsciously ever since. This seems more like, “Time flies when you numb yourself to the pain of boredom and emptiness.” I don’t want that for myself. I want to be engaged with my life.

I know Time is flying. I know it is. Still, I don’t want to be the guy who wakes up and says, “How in the world did I just turn 70??? I haven’t even done anything with my life yet! I didn’t follow my Bliss. I didn’t chase my dream. Now it seems too late.” I don’t ever want it to feel too late. I think I have started to do better with this in the last few years. I have to admit that the prospect of turning forty really scared me straight. It was around that time that I began gravitating more toward the idea of living my best, most authentic life, of making sure that my dreams were not being neglected. With this theme as my driving force, I began work on my personal labor of love: The Journal Project. Eventually, that led to the start of this little project in front of you called Journal of You. It also led to my Life Coach training and a much more focused schedule to maximize my efficiency and contribution to this world. Now every day is packed to the gills with things that are important to me, and I am becoming highly sensitive to activities that may be a waste of my time. I am determined that my time on this Earth will be meaningful and fulfilling, and I want to know, in the end, that I have been of service. I am on my way, one blessed day at a time.

How about you? What is your relationship with TIME? Open up your journal and take an honest look at the way your sands flow through the hourglass. How quickly is your life passing? Does it seem to pass more quickly each year, more slowly, or about the same? Do you ever feel like life is passing you by? Are you following your Bliss? Are you on a path toward the life of your dreams? If you are on that path, how long have you been on it? If you are off the path, how long have you been off? Do you seem to jump on and off frequently? Can you find your way back soon? Does it feel too late for you to be who you really want to be? How well do you stay in the Now? Do you know anyone who is on that unconscious slide through their years, just seeming to be paying the bills until it is time to die? Are you one of those people? When you leave the present, is your mind more likely to visit the past or the future? What do you think that says about you? Is that a good thing? When the day is over, how often do you feel like you have wasted it? When you get to the end of your days of Earth, do you think you will feel like it all went by too fast? Do you think you will be content with the way you lived? Would you like to go back and be a kid again? At what age do you feel like you were living your best life? What about it made that so? Can you capture that feeling today? Are you willing to do what it takes? Leave me a reply and let me know: How will you make TODAY the best Time of your life?

Lead with Love,

William

Kids Are The Best Teachers

DSC_1239“I wish friends held hands more often, like the children I see on the streets sometimes. I’m not sure why we have to grow up and get embarrassed about it.” –Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss

Hello friend,

I just spent a weekend with my kids and their little cousins. A few times, while sitting in their midst as they played, I was able to sort of rise above the chaos and just take them in for the marvel that they all are, individually and collectively. I was completely tickled by it. Certain qualities stood out so clearly in their interactions with one another: excitement, playfulness, honesty, activity, generosity, forgiveness, and authenticity. It was quite amazing to sit back and take in these beautiful characteristics that these kids seem to employ so naturally, so effortlessly. The magic just seems to ooze from them.

In one of my appreciative moments, I was struck by a strange, intrusive thought: What would this gathering be like without the children??? It is really an unusual question coming from me, as I do basically everything with my kids. Still, there it was in my mind, this query begging for a response. Really, what qualities would a fly on the wall—or someone stepping outside of the moment like I did—notice distinctly from this hypothetical gathering of adults only? Let’s be clear: this is not just a random assortment of strangers. It was me, my sisters, and their husbands. I love these people. I even like them and admire them. So, how would the situation look to the objective viewer? What would stand out for them about us and our interactions? What is common to most friendly adult gatherings?

As with the kids and their interactions, I hope that the love would be clear, the enjoyment in each other’s company. I think you would see generosity. I am not sure what else would be clear, though. The activity would be absent. There would be very little play, less sharing, less forgiveness, and, perhaps most tragic in my eyes, less authenticity. Mostly, I think the adults-only gathering reveals just a dimmer expression of the joys of life and the range of human expression.

Adults, when denied the influence of children and left to their own devices, tend to play their interactions—and often the entire game of Life–so close to the vest, not wanting to ruffle any feathers or be uncool. Much gets repressed. The unfortunate result of this self-censorship is that it leads people to be inauthentic. They are not expressing their Truth. It is not done in an intentionally devious way, but still it is an assault on Truth. Whether it stems from wanting to fit in, wanting people to like you, or just not wanting to create a stir, this lack of authentic expression and interaction leads to a real dulling of the scene. The fullness of human spirit and emotional range is stifled. The adult-only landscape runs the risk of being both false and boring.

I admit it, though: I am heavily biased. I have always much preferred the company of children. Through every phase of my life, if I have been forced—and yes, I need to be forced—to attend a large social gathering, you can bet you will find me hanging out with the kids rather than the adults (I love that, now that I am a parent, I have an excuse to “just be in here to keep an eye on the kids” at such events.). Sure, some of it is just my natural introversion, but there is no doubt that I just prefer the way kids interact. I am drawn to their authenticity. I love how they tell their Truth. Not just verbally—though that can be absolutely hilarious—but with all of their being. As I said, it simply oozes from their pores. They come by their Truth naturally and haven’t been trained enough to filter it. It is pure and beautiful to me.

Kids not only display the whole range of human spirit and emotions; if you are deeply connected to them, they take you through it, too! But as taxing, frustrating, heartbreaking, and downright exhausting as that is, it is somehow one hundred times more exhilarating, uplifting, rewarding, joyous, and downright soul-stirring. 

I don’t know how to explain it. If you surveyed folks on individual factors such as stress, self-care, frustration, and exhaustion, I am certain that parents and caregivers would score highly on incidences of these negative factors, possibly much higher than non-kid people. They would probably also score high on the positive end of the spectrum, such as tender, loving moments, or moments that they feel immense pride. If you weigh out all of the factors on paper, it may look like the kid people come out only even at best, and perhaps much worse off than the non-kid crowd. But then ask just about any parent, teacher, coach, or caregiver if they would prefer to be without those stress-inducing kids. Heck no! That theory on paper goes right out the window.

Seriously, I remember so many nights at journal-writing time, when my little ones were just babies and I was totally wiped out from some string of parenting ordeals that day, and I caught myself writing how fantastic it was to spend the day with my angels and how wildly grateful I was feeling. I would try a reality check and ask myself, “Weren’t you the one who got up at four o’clock this morning and hasn’t been back to sleep; who has been peed on, pooped on, and vomited on; who almost went out of your mind because she wouldn’t stop crying; who got so mad when he threw his plate of food on the floor for the seventeenth time; who just about worried yourself to death when his temperature spiked; and who cried with her when she fell and hurt her head? You have NO CAUSE to think this day was so awesome or that you are so blessed to get to spend it here with them rather than at work! There is no logic in it!” Still, there it was. Logic and surveys cannot explain it. I wouldn’t trade any of those days for anything, and I still look back on that time as blissful. Insane, perhaps, but still blissful.

So, this afternoon, with this topic on my mind, I took my kids to the local YMCA for swimming lessons. I was in the process of thinking how narrow-minded I might sound by writing something like this letter I am writing to you now. After all, people who don’t have kids and don’t interact with kids are still happy and fulfilled and wonderful, too. I worried that I may end up writing something that made it sound like if you aren’t a parent, then your life just isn’t very full and worthwhile. So, I took a few minutes and, instead of watching my own kids in their lessons, I turned my eyes to the “play pool” and watched other people’s children. They were dragging each other around on pool noodles, splashing, sometimes fighting, most of the time giggling. They were just generally being silly, playful, dramatic, and completely authentic. It might have been more emotional watching my own kids do this stuff, but even watching complete strangers, I found it tremendously comical, fascinating, and thoroughly moving. It is raw LIFE on display. I highly recommend finding ways to get involved with it (even if people think you are that creepy guy at the playground or pool who just likes to watch the kids play!).

Kids—yours, mine, or someone else’s—are absolutely magical. They can be all four seasons in one day. But even as they take us on this rollercoaster ride, they teach us a million different lessons. My biggest takeaway from this weekend with children—my lesson learned—is to be myself.  To tell my Truth, no matter how many emotions that stirs. To just be me, boldly and unapologetically. And, oh yeah, to have a little fun along the way!

How about you? What do the children in your life teach you? Open up your journal and get real. How much are children a part of your everyday world? Do you wish that amount were more or less? How are you going to go about making the adjustment to your preferred amount? What do you like to do with children—teach them things, just chat, or play whatever they are playing? How different are your interactions with kids than with adults? How much more do you smile? How much more imagination do you use? How much more engaged are you? How different are the feelings you are left with afterwards? As I write those questions, I am picturing one of my best friend’s faces when he is with my kids—he is childless–and how it so totally seems to make his heart sing. This otherwise quiet, unassuming guy just completely lights up. Is that you, or don’t kids really do that much for you? Whether or not you have kids of your own, do you think that raising children generally leads to a more happy and fulfilling life than remaining childless and pursuing one’s other passions more fully? What is the single greatest lesson you can learn from being around children? Leave me a reply and let me know: What do kids teach you?

Be you,

William