Me Time
Too busy is a myth. People make time for things that are really important to them. ~ Mandy Hale
My November Ass in Chair post was about getting a handle on procrastination. But three things this month—a month where many of us make resolutions to change our ways or to reach personal goals—triggered me to talk about a different side of productivity, namely about balancing your to-do list with making time to do the things that feed your soul.
The first trigger was a card Mela sent with her Movement Therapy payment that simply said, let’s make time for all the things we want to do. “Great idea, don’t you think?” she wrote in the margins.
The second was a recent personal reflection on all of my students who show up again and again for class. They do so because they’re clearly experiencing the benefits of a consistent, mindful practice. But I believe that, perhaps more importantly, they do so because they want to.
To me, creating balance between the things you have to do with the things you love to do is a recipe for a life well-lived (and all the sweeter when the two overlap). But a third trigger got me thinking about that balance in a different light. Namely, it got me thinking about death…
In a Making Sense with Sam Harris podcast episode called The Paradox of Death (listen to it, it’s brilliant), Harris describes an online opinion poll in which he had asked people how often they thought about death: its inevitability, their priorities in light of it, etc. Of the 40,000 people who had replied, a wide majority said they didn’t think about it very often. Harris confesses that this surprised him because he thinks about death numerous times every day. Not in a morbid way, he explains, but more in line with the memento mori reflections recommended by Buddhists and stoics that emphasize the preciousness of life and the nonrenewable character of time. He continues that our thoughts about the inevitability of death need not make us depressed, but should rather inspire us to compassion and wisdom: To do that most important thing now. To express your love now. To relinquish those hangups now. To bury the hatchet now. To live fully now. For one day you will die.
Harris’s podcast brought this whole essay home for me. Yes, by all means, make time for Me Time. Balance your to-do list with what you love to do: Take that yoga class, get that massage, absorb yourself in that hobby, go to that concert, enjoy that dessert, hang with your favorite buds. Doing so will bring happiness and probably personal high-fives about a life well-lived on your deathbed. But don’t forget about the stuff that really feeds your soul: Express your love. Relinquish your hangups. Bury the hatchet. Do the most important thing. Live fully.
Now.