The Mirror of Your Life (from 11/11/11)

As I was reading through some of my older posts, I found one I’d written after reading an article by Tim L. O’Brien. He was reflecting about his life as he was about to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. It touched something in me because I’d been reflecting about my life, too, but in my case it was because a close family member died. And since we all need reminders sometimes…about what’s really important in our lives…I thought I would resurrect it today.

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When we’re kids, all we want to do is hurry time along so we can be grown ups.   And then when we get there, all we want to do is keep striving toward new goals.  The expensive car, new house, fancy furniture, great job, huge bank account.  There’s always something that demands our time and attention.

Not that they’re always bad things.  I just wonder if, sometimes, our focus shouldn’t be turned elsewhere.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago, about realizing that no matter how many goals I’ve met in my life, reaching them didn’t make me as happy as I thought they would.  Not that there wasn’t a sense of accomplishment, the good feelings you get when you’ve worked hard for something and finally see it come to pass.

But happy?  Not really.

Because goals too often involve things.  Things can make your life easier, and maybe bring some degree of happiness.  But it’s fleeting.  Too soon we’re focused on the next goal, and the next and next and next.

In present day society it’s all the rage to be busy.  Constantly.  I don’t know about the rest of the world but sleep deprivation is pretty common in the United States.  We don’t consider proper rest  important in light of everything we have to do.

Why?

I know I’m guilty of doing exactly that.  And that’s part of the reason I’ve spent so much time thinking about my life, to this point.  So many unimportant things that I invested so much of myself in, while I neglected the things that really mattered.

And I can’t reclaim that time.  I can’t call a time out, say I want a do-over.  Those opportunities are gone.  All I can do now is refocus my attention.

On the people in my life.  I don’t want to look back in five years, or ten or twenty, and still be wishing I’d done some things differently.

Sure, I’ll still have goals I’ll want to try to achieve.  I need them.  I’ll always need to grow and learn and keep busy.  But I’m learning to prioritize.  To invest more time in my relationships with my kids, family and friends than I do in the things I want to accomplish.

We only have one chance at this life.  And every day that passes can either be something we’ll look back on with a smile…or live with regrets for opportunities that we allowed to pass us by.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m tired of regrets.

This reminds me of a song I heard awhile back.  The lyrics give me chills when I really listen to the words.  It’s about someone who missed out on a lot of his kids growing up years because he was on the road all of the time.  You don’t have to travel to not be present in your life.  You can be there twenty-four/seven and still not be there.

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What about you?  Do you have any regrets about the past?  Things you wish you’d done?  Things you wish you hadn’t made important…because it turned out that they really weren’t?

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2 Responses to The Mirror of Your Life (from 11/11/11)

  1. Emma says:

    We’d all like to live for the moment as if it was our last day, but real life stuff demands our attention.

    • Kristy K. James says:

      That is true, isn’t it? With me though, it’s more that I can spend far too much time on the writing stuff, and not nearly enough on the people stuff. 🙂

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