The Trouble With Many of Us Is… -Daily Meditation 10.11.23
Today’s quotation:
The trouble with many of us is that we slide along in life. If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection on what we want out of life that we provide to the question of what to do with a two-week vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days. – Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Today’s Meditation:
So few of us ever sit down and consider what we want from our jobs, what we want to give to them, and what we want to accomplish with them. Even if we’re just serving or cooking fast food, we can still do many things with our jobs that others don’t. Instead of just taking orders, we can create positive experiences for the customers; instead of just throwing the ingredients together, we can do our best to make each piece of food the best it can be.
In our families, do we do our best to create conditions in which we all can thrive, or do we just let life slide by, day after day, on autopilot, hoping that nothing terrible happens to shake the status quo? Do we think about what we want to look back on ten or twenty years from now in order to decide whether what we’re doing now will contribute to that ideal? If I reflect on what I want from life and decide that what I want is to help young people, but my current work gives me little to no contact with young people, then guess what?
“The aimless procession of our busy days” is a troubling phrase. We tend to equate busyness with accomplishment, but that’s not necessarily true. Sometimes, we get so busy that we lose sight of any goals, any aims, that we might have, and we just get caught up in doing what “needs” to be done without doing anything to personalize it or to turn it into the kind of accomplishment that we truly hope for in life. Our lives are ours if we take the reins or the wheel, but most of us loan them out to others who don’t necessarily need us personally–they just need someone to do the jobs they need to have done.
What will your life be like over the next ten years on your current track? What will your family be like ten years from now? What will you have accomplished on the job during the next decade? If you’re not all that happy with the answers you find, then perhaps change is in order. And the change doesn’t need to be drastic–sometimes, a shift in perspective and attitude can do wonders to rejuvenate us, help us reach our goals, and fulfill our dreams. One true thing, though, is that we’ll never see the need for any change unless we reflect on the lives we’re leading, the things we want from life, and the things we want to contribute to life.
Questions to consider:
Why is it so easy to “slide along” without reflecting on what we truly hope to accomplish and contribute?
Is it true that life is a mirror? Is it showing back to you the things you care about? Are you faithful to those things in the ways you live?
What do you genuinely wish to contribute to this world before you leave it?
For further thought:
It is fair to say that the world around you is a mirror. Therefore, you have more control over the future than you might think because you can shape your world just by being true to what you care about. -Bradley Trevor Greive
If you missed our last Daily Meditation, it is here.
