It has been a while since I’ve written here. Life gets in the way from time to time, I guess.
We’re at a moment in our lives (my wife and I being the we) in which busyness is our constant companion. With children at 7 and 4 and on summer break, and extended family hanging out with us a lot, and a new puppy, and the myriad dreams I have in my mind, we find life sprinting by us, often unannounced and without asking our permission.
I, at 41 now, have found myself in a mode of introspection. More than usual, which for me is a lot. Who am I and what do I want for my life, and why does that feel so far away from the day-to-day?
What do I treasure versus what do I desire? I find that I treasure time and the grandness of possibility more than anything else at the moment. I treasure the little moments of time I get to share with my kids and with my wife, though I am often distracted and un-present. I treasure the thought of my kids becoming individuals who are more like themselves than me or my wife. I treasure the openness of their horizons and am thrilled with what might be.
Somewhere beneath these treasures on the priority curve are the countless projects I have in my mind: mechanical work on a car, a truck and a motorcycles; projects for a bicycle or two; finishing a doctoral dissertation (well, starting and finishing it both); writing and reading; playing music; photographing; hammock time.
And in this region are the duties and obligations of life. The day job, our casual friends and extended family, doing yardwork and dishes and laundry. I am wired such that these obligations are never thrilling to me, but are the things that I think of as keeping me from treasure. If I heard myself say that out loud, I would chastise the speaker – but there it is, and that is my tendency.
Perhaps this barely-controlled frenzy is why I am so drawn to Christian and Buddhist monastics in particular. They strive for intentional focus on the present moment, on simplicity and long-term commitment to deeply important people. They establish patterns and routines of living such that treasure is treasured, and other things are more easily seen for what they are.
I have found in recent years that writing (blogging, journaling, processing in electronic form) both allows and forces me to examine and synthesize my life. Therein lies the treasure that writing has become for me, and therein lies the reason that I am grateful to spend a few minutes here, writing what Anne Lamott would celebrate as a shitty first draft, but a filled page nonetheless, and words transferred from my interior world through my ergonomic keyboard to the electronic world.
External thoughts, treasures.