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Reflections July 2015

Life Is for Living

Tick, Tick, Tick

By Neil Wyrick

A former president of the Menninger Foundation once said, “If each of us can be helped by science to live a hundred years, what will it profit us if our hates and fears, our loneliness and remorse, will not permit us to enjoy them?”

Like a clock, so goes our life – one minute, one hour, one day at a time. But our days are not governed by the calculated unwinding of a spring but by the choices we make.

If you stumble do you automatically blame others? A friend led you astray. Your parents didn't bring you up properly. The workplace requires it. Unfortunately, the truth is that too often we let ourselves be governed by that which is easier than by that which is right.

Do you hold onto what power you can claim, whether you deserve it or not? Do you laugh because you have won out over moral obstacles? And in the end, do you sadly stare at the ghostly remnants of what might have been?

A century ago, the average worker spent 70 hours on the job and lived 40 years. Now, we work an average 40 hours a week and live 70 plus years. That’s 1500 more free hours a year and a total of over 33,000 additional free hours in a lifetime that's approximately 26,000 days long. A lot of time to be bored or anxious, filled with guilt or pride, or hopefully putting such abundance to good use.

Tick, tick, tick...I’ve lived more than that average, as have many of you, and in that living
don't we wish we could say, “I've have always made the right choices and then followed through on my decisions.” Unfortunately, we can’t, of course.

Author David Dunn once wrote, “Like most people, I was brought up to look upon life as a process of getting…but in this humdrum world there is altogether too much grubbing and too little giving. I recommend giving as an exciting and thoroughly satisfying hobby. Fortunately each of us has a different assortment of gifts – some of us have spare time; others have surplus mental or physical energy; others have a special art, skill or talent; still others have ideas, imagination, the ability to organize, the gift of leadership. (But) all of us can give appreciation, kindness, interest, loyalty, understanding, encouragement, tolerance – and a score of other little portions of ourselves.”

A former president of the Menninger Foundation once said, “If each of us can be helped by science to live a hundred years, what will it profit us if our hates and fears, our loneliness and remorse, will not permit us to enjoy them?”

No matter how you like to spend your away-from-work hours, your mood sets the ambiance. Is it leisure time or just idleness? If leisure, use some of it for something besides play. Don’t misunderstand me, there’s nothing wrong with play. Sometimes we need to get so engrossed in a game we are playing, a book we are reading, a job we are completing, we don’t care what time it is. And idle time does not always mean doing nothing. It's moments of solitude and quietness should give you time for contemplation, some journeying within.  If you ask yourself who has given you the most trouble in your life, and if you will have to answer truthfully, it will probably be: “Me.”

 

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