Though I've known it for years, it was only today that it
really hit me, with all of its implications and
repercussions: In order to get anywhere, you need to know
where you are going.
Sounds silly and/or obvious? Well, maybe it is. But that
doesn't make it any the less true. Or self-evident to a
person who never really consciously thought about and
internalized the idea.
Someone like me, for instance.
I mean, of course when I leave the house to go to a (for
example) doctor's appointment, I know where I am going and
how to get there and, B"H, I arrive there. But now that I am
"retired" and the kids are out of the house (at least on a
"wake up and get them breakfast and out of the house" basis),
this "in order to get anywhere, you need to know where you
are going" phrase has taken on a new dimension.
Or, rather, perhaps I only realized the implications of the
new dimension today.
It's been almost a year ago now that massive cut-backs laid
off most of the work force where I used to do P.R. work 20
hours a week. And it's now been several months that I've been
wondering at the fact that it now takes me almost half a
morning to do a laundry or to pay a bill, where in the "old
days" when I worked out of the house three or four times a
week, I somehow also managed to finish the laundry and do
various and sundry other tasks on the days I worked, too.
Food and/or vegetable shopping, straightening up the house,
helping a friend or a neighbor with something she needed help
to get done, going to a doctor's appointment, all these
things and more somehow got done, all in good time, even
though I was working out of the house at the same time.
How? Why do the same activities now take twice (or three
times) as long? (Yes, I am older, and climbing the steps
takes double the time, but still even counting rest stops...
it just doesn't figure.)
So then today, when I returned from spending an entire
morning walking one block in order to (1)get some peanuts and
pistachios for Shabbos in the nut store that had no one else
waiting in line, (2)putting three already sealed envelopes
into the mail box fourteen steps beyond the nut store, and
(3)buying one chicken in a butcher store that is located
across the street from the nut store which, because of the
early hour, had only one other customer inside, well, how was
it possible that it was almost lunch-time by the time I
returned home and completed one or two quick phone calls? It
was even too late to try to get to the parsha shiur
given in a friend's house that is only a twelve minute walk
from my home!
And then it suddenly hit me. When I "just go" where I need to
go, it takes much much longer than if I have a list of
several places and things I have to do that day.
It's the list that makes me do things quicker and consolidate
to move faster. Even if I don't have anything else extra on
the list than I do in my mind when I'm meandering along the
street accomplishing what I need to do, somehow with that
list in my hand, and the ability to check off each item as it
is accomplished, well, somehow more things just seem to get
done in much less time.
Yes, this is probably obvious to many, if not to all. But it
was an eye-opener to me. For now I realize that if I want to
keep even a little bit of that tempo that I had when I was
working outside of the house, as well as simultaneously
running a house and living a life, then I need to make a list
the night before of things I need to do that following day,
even if some of them can be put off for a day or two, and
then, amazingly, even drinking that first morning cup of
coffee will be a little more intense, upbeat, and at a faster
pace.
And I won't enjoy it any the less, or feel like that's all
that I accomplished that morning.
