Time After Time
Time After Time
One week ... seven days ... 148 hours ... 8,880 minutes You would think a person would find plenty of time in a span like that, right? And yet I am trying to finish a task that has been undone for that time span. Struggling for words and watching the clock tick and I stare at a mostly empty page. And then I realize that is just what happens to all of us and our good intentions. I could make a million excuses, some of them very good. You would even agree that some of them are valid. But the end result remains the same ... I procrastinated away 532,800 seconds without completing my task.
I have to confess to being as guilty as anyone else of being so wrapped up in my life and activities that I have a hard time imagining where I would put another activity. Yet I have realized that it doesn't have to be a big deal to make a big difference for someone. Recently a movie called "Pay It Forward" promoted the concept of returning favor for favor. In other words, whenever someone does something good for or to you, you Pay It Forward by repeating a favor for someone else. Imagine a world where we were focused on doing good and didn't worry about getting even for harmful acts? If we all looked, I believe we could find one small act of kindness we could perform each day. And when you multiply that by the efforts of all of us, what a huge difference we could make.
And we must be vigilant that we do not let time and the demands of our lives take our eyes from the vision that gives us purpose. Few of us would say our goal in life is to go to work each day, tread water through the week and play catch up with a vengeance on the weekend. And yet that is all too often what our life becomes as we are swallowed up by the chore of keeping pace with all the demands on our time. We get up, get ready for work, go to work, come home from work, get ready for tomorrow at work and all the things we wanted to do are left scattered along the wayside of our lives. At work the clock structures our day. Perhaps it is rebellion against this structure that makes us procrastinate about so many of the things we want to do, things we would do if only we had the time.
This week I realized that I had to take charge when I found myself dreaming about things that happened in the workplace. I determined that I was going to put those issues on a shelf when I clocked out and do my best to concentrate on my own priorities in the other 66% of the time I have. There are things I want to do ... goals I have to accomplish and a rut I have to climb out of.
If some of this sounds too much like your life, I hope you will think about it and take steps to find areas where you can contribute to the well being of someone else. I have come to believe that many of the problems we face in life can be reduced to their true value when we make an effort to step outside our own concerns and help someone else. The smallest effort can often make a huge difference to someone else. I am determined to make many small differences. And perhaps by doing so, I will regain my vision and become a force for change and improvement in my small part of the world.
Peggy
Erickson
03/24/01
Discuss how you can make a difference in The Forums at Xisti.com. Not registered? Click on the Register Now icon in the left column to join the community.