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I WAS JUST READING A TRUE STORY about a
Norwegian soldier who had been put out of action by frostbite
and was confined to a small sled in the middle of the Arctic
wilderness. Some friends were hiding him from the German soldiers
who were occupying Norway. He was alone for twenty-seven days
except for a short visit by someone about every three or four
days. He had a book with him, but he didn’t read much of
it during those twenty-seven days. He “never seemed to have
the time.”
When I read that last line, it jolted me
awake and has been bugging me ever since. Do you understand why?
Here was a man who couldn’t walk, who was confined to a
sleeping bag in the middle of a silent, snow-covered, completely
uninhabited area in the Arctic, and he was too busy to read.
What’s wrong with this picture?
What’s wrong is the same thing that’s
wrong with you and me. We’re too busy. You are, aren’t
you? Yeah, so am I. Short of time. More things to do than you
have time to do. Always trying to catch up.
But what has been dawning on me with a
certain degree of irony and ridiculousness is that my lack of
time is completely created by me.
There is no shortage of time. There is
only the greedy effort to get more from our days than we can,
while at the same time greedily wanting to also spend some of
that time in leisure.
It’s silly. And it’s tragic.
It costs us the experience of living. Time seems to fly by. Wow,
where did those last ten years go? Were we so busy getting things
done we forgot to enjoy our own lives?
Let’s just relax, shall we? Let’s
quit trying to do so much. We don’t have to get all
that stuff done. We don’t have to be perfect parents
— kids have been raised by imperfect parents for a long
time and still turned out okay. We don’t have to be perfect
at anything. We don’t have to do it all. And we don’t
have to be happier. But when we realize we don’t have to
cram so much into our days, we will be.
If your own greed is making
you discontent,
quit cramming so much into your days.
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