A friend told me recently she isn’t keen on the idea of “living for the weekend.” She said, “I don’t want to spend my life simply wishing away the days and waiting for it to begin.” Her words struck me because too often I find myself wishing away my days–wishing it was Saturday already, wishing it was the holidays, wishing I was further along in life and so on. After we talked, I realized I’d been thinking of my life more like a to-do list and less like the vibrant, yet fleeting, adventure it is.
I wonder if life is less about arriving and more about becoming. You’ve heard it said before: life is a journey, not a destination. I think this cliché has more truth to it than we’d like to admit. Too often I find myself hyper-focused on achieving a goal that I miss out on the joy, struggle, and growth that lead me here.
I fear that if I’m not filling my days full with activities, events, and engagements that somehow I’m missing out on what my life could be, instead of enjoying what it is. Saying “no” to one more commitment, one more event, one more coffee date has become a radical counter-cultural act. Learning this lesson and actually living it out is certainly easier said than done.
In a society obsessed with efficiency, productivity, and consumption, it’s easy to get caught up in the “hustle culture” mindset. I’m worried that we as a people are placing our worth in what we do, not who we are. Our identity is not defined by how many assignments we submit, shifts we cover, or invites we RSVP to, but rather shaped by the things we say “no” to in order to say “yes” to the things that give meaning to our lives.
Leaving room for margin, time to just be, is not something that comes naturally to me. The more I practice holding space and the more intentional I am with how I spend my time, I’ve started to realize what could be shouldn’t be something to fear, but rather something to hold gently with awe and wonder.