There’s no doubt that we are living both
in accelerated times and in changing times. Quickly changing times!
There’s plenty of stuff to do-do-do and, too often it seems, not
enough time to be. Ah, what a sorry old song that is. So, why don’t
we change it?
It’s a great question. One I ask myself a lot. Which, inevitably,
leads to other questions: What is it that I don’t want to be doing?
And if I wasn’t doing it, then what would I like to be doing
instead? Sometimes my answers are boring. Boo-hoo for me. So, I prod
myself with the one-day question: If I had only one more day to live
on this fantastically diverse and unbelievably creative planet
called Earth, what would I be doing? Now that will put things in
perspective in a hurry!
Over the last few years I’ve learned to say “no” to things I really
don’t want to do. Even if it’s a ‘friend’ asking for a ‘favor.’ Some
favors we might not like doing, of course, but we like doing them
anyway to help our friends. For me, those are yes favors — the joy
of helping a friend is greater than the small annoyance or
irritation or time taken for doing the favor. Amazing how sometimes
things we don’t like to do turn out to be very rewarding all the
same. And so we keep doing them.
That’s another thing I’ve found: sometimes, by asking ourselves (and
really contemplating) what we do and don’t like to do, we find that
much of what we are already doing we actually enjoy. Sometimes all
it requires is a small tweak, a slightly different perspective to
realize: hey, this is fun and I’m pretty good at it, too.
Beginnings and endings and new beginnings again... It’s a natural
rhythm that flows through our lives. The more aware we are of what
we are do-do-doing, the more time we have to be: to open ourselves
and expand into the larger presence of who we already are. Ahhh!
Dawn Brunke
is the editor of Alaska Wellness and the author of Animal Voices,
Shapeshifting with Our Animal Companions, and the newly released
Animal Voices, Animal Guides. See
www.animalvoices.net for more.
