Sunday, August 8, 2010

I'd Rather Be Fishing




Those bumper stickers always make me smile.  I'd rather be fishing or biking or dancing or quilting or whatever.  The list is endless.

Monday is notarious for people "rathering" to do almost anything than going back to work after the weekend.  Even though I'm retired now, I still remember those days.  To be honest, I liked going to work so Mondays never bothered me.  Nor was I a big partier, so I didn't have to deal with hangovers.  But I know I was the exception to the rule.

One sticker says "I'd rather be digging my grave" and that got me thinking.  Why is it that we'd almost always rather be doing something different than what we're doing right now?  Or why are we often thinking about something fun we did back then...or will do this weekend or 4 weeks/months/years from now?  I'm not sure it's just about the grass-being-greener thing.  I think it's about a very human condition:  we tend to live in the future or the past but seldom in the NOW.  It takes a lot of work.

There's much written on the subject, of course (Eckhart Tolle's
The Power of Now being one of the best), and sometimes "incidents" remind us to just enjoy what we have right now.  Astrid heard the other day, for instance, about a previous neighbor who suddenly keeled over and died at age 56.  I wonder if he was enjoying life before that moment or if he had things on his back burner for another day that will now never come.

Maybe I'm talking about two things:  enjoying what's happening right now (even if it's Monday morning at work) AND making the things we enjoy happen now instead of who knows when.  But why is either so hard?

Surely there are sticking points beyond our control.  Our hands are tied.  We have responsibility, health and money issues.  Some things will simply never happen and we all know it.  And so we brainwash ourselves into thinking we are stuck and things will never change.  Our now becomes ho-hum or, for some, downright miserable.

Some people have more fire under them than others and are the go-getters we watch and marvel at.  They seem to have an easy time of making things happen.  But that's probably not true.  We may never know the blood, sweat and tears that got them to where they are now.  All we know is our story and how trapped or in a rut we can feel.  If the cycle never breaks, it can be truly depressing.

We saw the above little girl the other weekend while driving out in the countryside here in The Netherlands not far from home...and I saw myself in her.  My body is getting older and less capable but that Child is bouncing around like a ping-pong ball inside of me, often pestering me with "C'mon.  Let's go fishing!"

And why not?  Let's just go do it.  Let's enjoy the work on our plate, do the dishes with a smile on our face and...then go fishing.  Have our cake and eat it, too.  Little rewards after the odd jobs of my retired life, waiting for the out-n-about weekend after Astrid has worked her tail off all week.  Okay, it's Monday.  How many more days till Friday, did you say?  It sure beats the digging-my-grave alternative!

[Did you see Toni and Marcie's
V2V post on Saturday?  Marcie's little boy and my little girl are fishing buddies!  :) ] 




1 comment:

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