An Evening Out

All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Many days, I jump on the proverbial 'hamster wheel' to get through my day, my week, my month, my grown-up life. Don't get me wrong, I am honored and grateful to have that job I don't hate, those busy, healthy kids, and those other projects that give me purpose and direction. Yet, there are those moments that I pause and ask myself if this ticking off of items on the to-do list is the best way to spend the finite number of hours I have in this slice of my life called today. The list is never actually 'done' and the claustrophobia of that reality is daunting. It seems to hit me most often, around hour 12 or 13 of my day; dinner time.

The "family dinner" has evolved into something less than nourishing in our culture, at least in terms of the spiritual rejuvenation it provides, if not the physical. (Tackling that subject, however, is a whole different blog, somewhere else.) Regardless, I believe the evening should mark a time of celebrating the successes and re-evaluating the challenges of the day. That's pretty hard to do effectively when there is still so much more to be done before you rest. The end of the day, when the weight of it all is in your pockets, compromising your posture and already starting to stake it's claim on your tomorrow, is a crucial time to add one more item to your to-do list: get outside.

Take the time, however brief, to walk out the front door, away from the dishes, from the preparations for the morning, from the answering of the emails that you didn't get to before the end of the work day. Those things will still be there when you get back. (Although, no matter how many times I walk away, I still have this fleeting hope that the clean-up fairy will come and take care of it all in my absence.) With each footstep, with each revolution of the bike peddle or the ground poke of the walking stick, one of the weights in your pocket will fall out.

Now, I am not suggesting that those weights disappear, yet getting outdoors provides a momentary space where those weights are not all part of your load. Sometimes the process of going outdoors and moving is the way to methodically process all of those weights, organize them, prioritize them. Some days turning the pockets out and dumping them on the way out to pick them up later will be in order. And, you don't even have to create a strategy for this as you are tying the shoelaces on your sneakers. It will just happen, exactly the way it is supposed to happen that day if you let it.

So, I know you don't think you have time for this kind of indulgence, this silly evening sabbatical. Trust me, you do. It is about balance, and about quiet and about perspective. Figuring out what truly needs your attention and your energy. And then, when you head back inside to tackle the rest of that to-do list, you will feel a little lighter, your pockets emptied and your mind a bit more clear. It's a simple solution to the hamster wheel. Just get outside.