still learning

I am good with calendars, and with to-do lists. I can prioritize and I know how to "eat the frog" each and every day. Knowing doesn't mean it always gets done, it just means that it when it doesn't get done I know it doesn't.

But I did something last week that brought me up short.

I took the do list and scheduled all the tasks I intended to do for a specific time, on that specific day.

What a shock. I made them all fit into the day on the calendar--but that didn't make it possible for me to do them all in that day.

I always knew that things "rolled over" every day but it became clear to me, that day, that things have rolled over from year to year. I have spent my life over-estimating what I could get done in the time, and with the resources, I had.

Too many things on that list for just one lifetime.

I have to be a father, and a husband and a householder and a child welfare guru and a Quaker minister. If there is anything left over then maybe...maybe I should have put it into being a father, a husband, a house holder, a child welfare guru and a Quaker minister. Maybe I will, from now on.

I used to tell the kids in my ecology classes that "there is only so much of everything."

There is enough of me, used wisely, for me to be a father, a husband, a householder, a child welfare guru and a Quaker minister...

I heard a dharma talk once the theme of which was "what can you give up and still have enough?"

I can give up everything but those and have more than enough.

Well, yes, of course, we have to throw in an occasional ball game. but most of those come in under being a father. Good thing I brought my girls up right.

;=)