(now grown) children, my proficiency in time management is well-honed. In recent years, though, I have tasted a maturity in this skill. Earlier in my life, my large hourly Day-timer was rigidly attended and any unexpected diversion met with a non-productive angst. As I have grown older, I notice an increasing ability to pick my battles and allow lesser duties to wait.”
This is an excerpt from a letter I finished on Tuesday. It is for a graduate program I hope to begin in January.
The “lesser duties” are certainly relative and in my case have a quotidian quality. They are the obligatory jobs of living here—bed-making, folding, dusting, diapering, etc. Most of my adult life I have sought to perform them with beauty and attentiveness and seldom with carelessness. I found them to be a source of satisfaction…mysteriously so.
Now, in another season and a fueled with a new passion that affords little time for these once high-priority tasks, I do not want to minimize the value of the ordinary. Contentment in the mundane has been the stuff of peace for me.
I have often imagined how I would fare in different situations of ordinariness or deprivation asking self -searching questions: Could you be content completely alone? Could you do this task for the duration of your life if it were required? Could you function undisturbed with few material possessions? Could you walk out Victor Frankl’s experiences as he did in the Nazi death camps? If pondered, these foundational considerations lend depth, honesty, and consciousness to one’s journey. I need to believe I am not running away from something distasteful, but transferring that careful attention to a fresh purpose.
I have friends with impeccably clean kitchens and orderly closets. Some of them are also people of passion and creativity and pursue those ambitions with excellence as well. Some have maids. I have yet to balance it all so successfully and a maid is not feasible.
As we pursue creative works with the kind of mindfulness those works require, then for some of us strange life forms may grow in the refrigerator, the laundry may stand in piles, the toilet may go unscrubbed, and we may be misunderstood. A voice of shame will scream to be heard, but I am thinking that “maturity" might respond with a convincing, “Let it be.”
This is an excerpt from a letter I finished on Tuesday. It is for a graduate program I hope to begin in January.
The “lesser duties” are certainly relative and in my case have a quotidian quality. They are the obligatory jobs of living here—bed-making, folding, dusting, diapering, etc. Most of my adult life I have sought to perform them with beauty and attentiveness and seldom with carelessness. I found them to be a source of satisfaction…mysteriously so.
Now, in another season and a fueled with a new passion that affords little time for these once high-priority tasks, I do not want to minimize the value of the ordinary. Contentment in the mundane has been the stuff of peace for me.
I have often imagined how I would fare in different situations of ordinariness or deprivation asking self -searching questions: Could you be content completely alone? Could you do this task for the duration of your life if it were required? Could you function undisturbed with few material possessions? Could you walk out Victor Frankl’s experiences as he did in the Nazi death camps? If pondered, these foundational considerations lend depth, honesty, and consciousness to one’s journey. I need to believe I am not running away from something distasteful, but transferring that careful attention to a fresh purpose.
I have friends with impeccably clean kitchens and orderly closets. Some of them are also people of passion and creativity and pursue those ambitions with excellence as well. Some have maids. I have yet to balance it all so successfully and a maid is not feasible.
As we pursue creative works with the kind of mindfulness those works require, then for some of us strange life forms may grow in the refrigerator, the laundry may stand in piles, the toilet may go unscrubbed, and we may be misunderstood. A voice of shame will scream to be heard, but I am thinking that “maturity" might respond with a convincing, “Let it be.”
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