The Living

It’s been a while. Too long. Life is being lived. And somehow my commentary has dwindled down a bit. But I’m still processing the living.

And I’m finding that the living is quite different from some of the things I had believed it to be.

For quite some time, I have had a strong aversion to busy-ness. And so I avoid it whenever and however I may. I am very, very careful with my time-commitments and such. (Which I realize is probably incredibly annoying to some.) It started when we moved back to the States after living in Paris, France for four months. Before we left, my husband and I were pretty busy. With life.  You know, the kind of busy that makes you feel like so much is happening, but nothing really ever gets done. But then we had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to empty our lives of every busy thing on our calendars. And while we were there, we were able to catch our breath and just enjoy. (Well, actually, I got to just enjoy. My husband enjoyed but also worked his tail off on the global project his company sent him over there to work on.)

I learned how to enjoy playing Little People with my then three-year-old. I learned how to savor taking her and her seven-month-old sister to the park to watch her climb and slide and chase pigeons and try to interact with little French kids.

Then, when we returned home, we had the amazing opportunity to carefully choose those things we wanted to fill our living back up with. And, I do mean carefully. And we chose to never get back up to the busy-ness we had before we left our lives and crossed the Big Pond. Because, for us, the busy gets in the way of the living. And Paris helped me realize that.

Even still, I am very careful to not get too busy.

But I think this carefulness has somehow turned into my being stingy with my time. And somehow in all of the carefulness, I’ve lost the living that I’ve been trying so hard to preserve.

And suddenly I am finding myself in this new season of life where I can take on more things. My kids are both in school all day (except for the eight-soon-to-be-nine snow days — but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post). Consequently, I have time to do some of the stuff I previously chose to avoid. Now I have the freedom to load up a bit more with commitments and such.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still very, very careful. But I’m more open to things that might require more time. Because sometimes, that’s where the living is. 

And goodness knows I do not want to miss the living.