When Time Stands Still

Everything is moving so fast right now. My days are jam packed from the moment I wake up till the moment I fall, exhausted, into bed. I wish I could turn my phone, my e-mail and my calendar – OFF!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about that old question “When you’re lying on your death bed, will you be glad you spent all that time ________ (fill in the blank “at work”, “answering e-mail”, etc.) It’s an easy “no” of course, and so I am trying to make better decisions about how I spend my time.

Time spent with Sam and Katherine, time with friends, time spent encouraging and helping others, time spent reading and writing (no arithmetic, thank you), time spent sleeping and snuggling – that’s all the good stuff.

The bad stuff? It’s not even worth listing, but it’s the stuff that fills most my day. I have the best intentions. I’ll slow down, breathe deeply, savor the moment. But then my e-mail inbox count climbs steadily and I can see I have 12 voicemails waiting to be picked up, and my favorite customer calls and needs a favor, quick, or more likely, my least favorite customer calls and insists I drop everything, quick. And before I know it, I’m caught up in a whirlwind of multi-tasking and moving at the speed of light and everything around me becomes a blur.

It’s during those times that I’m most likely to miss the little or big things that people around me do to help make my life easier. Or if I do notice, I don’t take time to allow the full impact of their care and kindness to sink in.

Two completely unexpected things happened this week that nearly brought me to me knees in gratitude in the midst of my rushing about. And I want to share it here, not only to say thank you, but also so that I can savor the full impact of their kindness by writing about it.

First – I taught a workshop yesterday and arrived at work from an out of town trip only a few hours before the workshop was to begin. I was frantically gathering all handouts and notes and props I needed when Tanya showed up to offer me three wildly colored markers. She remembered that I had used them and had had fun with them in a previous workshop and had taken it upon herself to remind me that I might want to use them again this time. In addition, she wasn’t sure if I had the poster size financial statements I teach from, so she took it upon herself to order an extra set for me – JUST IN CASE.

Then, today, Linda, my trusted assistant who makes ALL things possible and keeps me on the straight and narrow, snuck into my office while I was in a meeting and totally cleaned and organized my desk. I returned to find that the explosion of paper and files that had littered my workspace had been neatly arranged into ordered and prioritized stacks. Just seeing those neat little piles added an extra year to my life.

I was so touched by these acts generosity.
Thank you Linda. Thank you Tanya.
In that moment, your kindness made time stand still.