Time – A Life Lesson

“Leave time for something to go wrong everyday.”

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced is putting way too much on my plate. I know I do it and often times it gets overwhelming. However, most times it makes me feel great to see how much I can get done in a day. Scratch it ALL off the check list, can it get more satisfying than that? It builds my confidence to say I work best under pressure. Like wow, see how much I can handle? Bring it on world, I’ve got this!

Then there are days where I just don’t. The day starts wrong, something broke, wasn’t charged, dogs throwing up, forgot about the laundry, didn’t make that call. At a young age I started to feel the consequences of this. In high school I was THAT girl involved in almost every school club or activity. Constantly trying to over stimulate myself to feel that sense of pride or confidence. What most people didn’t see – the break downs that came when it didn’t all come together. When I, GOD FORBID, forgot one of the 10,000 things I tasked myself with. My inner dialog would become fluster and frantic as if I forgot what it feels like to actually forget something. I was next level dramatic with myself for something that could be fixed. The reaction came from my lack of time.

That one error would lead to a calamity of errors and I DIDN’T HAVE TIME FOR THEM. Hence the breakdown, where the turmoil in my brain would commence. What would have to fall off the list? Who would I have to let down? How could I let this happen? The list goes on an on. Mind you, this inner dialogue would happen in minutes even seconds as I realized something wasn’t on track or forgotten. I use to let those thoughts paralyze me mentally and feel like – WELP, THAT’S IT! FUTURES OVER, SHOWS OVER, I’M DONE FOR.

I have a vivid memory of writing a paper at the dining room table, late. Like way too late. My head was in my hands, fingers gripped around my hair as if holding on tight would make me think harder, better, faster. I felt the stress and pressure building in my face and tears started to well up in the corners. No sobbing, just running tears as my brain ran through all of my self sabotaging thoughts. My Dad is in the living room, which was a clear visual shot to where I was sitting at the table. He didn’t panic, he didn’t alarm the room to my distressed status. He picked up his empty ice cream bowl as an excuse to pass me and went to the kitchen. I knew he saw me at this point so I make myself look busy to mask my discomfort and hoped he didn’t make it “a big deal.” Attention in the form of help when I was younger was so agonizing for me as I was the one that “had it all together.” My pride couldn’t handle the help. Then I hear Dad’s footsteps coming back in my direction. He heads to the corner of the table and gently says to me, “what’s wrong, boo?” I honestly couldn’t tell you what I told him, probably a bunch of excuses to rush the “confrontation” along. To soothe my perfectionist ego he told me, “I know you’ll figure this out. In the future, leave time for something to go wrong everyday.” I let that sink in as he said goodnight and walked away to bed. I starred at the computer, the only one awake in the house and typed what might have been the worst paper I had ever written in my life.

The deed was done. The next morning, paper in hand, I went to school with a large Dunkin’ iced coffee (IYKYK). I handed in the paper and walked around miserable, disappointed in myself. I got home and asked my dad what he meant. Leave time for things to go wrong? Okay, let me just pencil that in? He explained to me that no matter how much planning we do in our lives, there will always be something out of our control. There will always be something that goes wrong. Sometimes we feel it directly, sometimes those around us feel it. Either way, what can go wrong, will go wrong. Another of my Dad’s favorite phrases, Murphy’s Law of course. Teenage me still took it very literally so I just stopped trying to cram so much into my day.

Now that he’s gone and I feel more than ever that he was speaking from experience I have a new interpretation of his lesson. The amount of tasks we achieve in the day do not equal our worth. There are too many factors outside of us for that to be a feasible. What I learned, not only from the quote itself but also the way my Dad delivered the message, was that no amount of time spent will solve all your problems. No amount of time spent will stop problems from arising. Each day we need to leave time for those issues; whether it’s for us to process them, handle them, heal from them. It might look like a cup of coffee, a home cooked meal, time with your nose in a book, your butt on the couch. Whatever it is for you, its so important to ALLOW yourself that time to pause and collect yourself in order to effectively and productively approach your next day, your next problem.

Remember too always, “leave time for something to go wrong everyday.”

Comment below with what you were able to walk away from this lesson with, I can’t wait to hear from you!