So here I am, staring down the inevitable end of break and move back to my home 3,000 miles away from home, and I'm wondering...did I manage to do anything worthwhile during my four and a half weeks of vacation?
It's a fairly depressing question, which means I don't think I want to know the answer. There were so many things I was looking forward to doing when I got home, but while I was here I couldn't remember what all those things were. Now, slowly, they're coming back to me...now that I'm almost completely out of time.
Maybe it doesn't matter that I don't have much besides a pile of presents to show for my Christmas break. Maybe the worth of the activities I chose to devote my time to can't be measured in a tangible way - maybe what counts are the laughs shared with friends and the conversations over food and the moments spent in companionable silence. Maybe it's the time spent reevaluating and refocusing and reconnecting.
Or maybe I wasn't really productive at all.
That possibility makes me think. Hard.
What would a life lived so that every moment counted look like? How does mine compare? What do I need to change?
What would I have done differently in the past year if I was living every second of every day to the fullest?
What should I start doing differently now?
I read once that statistically, New Year's resolutions are doomed to fail. Great, let's just stay stuck in the same old rut then, since we're never going to stay committed to improvement. How defeatist.
I don't want to be a statistic. I want to live in such a manner that I have something to show for this life I've been given - not so that I can flaunt my accomplishments, but so that I don't get to the end of my life and realize how much time I've wasted. What's the point of watching another episode of Bones when I could be spending time with a friend or, better, strengthening my relationship with God? I don't want to doubt the wisdom of the way I spent my time anymore. I want to know that I used what I was given well.
I'm not sure what this looks like practically just yet. It'll be a process - finding new ways to make my time valuable rather than burning away the excess, as I'm so accustomed to doing. It won't be easy, but I'm pretty sure that I'll realize, somewhere down the road, that it was worth it.
So...here goes.
(I know what you're thinking...well that was great, another reflection post. I know. I'm sorry. I don't know why this keeps happening. I hope things will be different in the future.)
(Also, 50th post. Yay.)
