ASK YOURSELF TWO SIMPLE QUESTIONS

Recently I came down with a cold and emailed a massage therapist to cancel as I didn’t want to expose her.

A week went by without a word.  Had it gone to spam, I wondered?

I sent a second email, this one the day before the appointment.  Eventually she responded.   She’d seen the first email in her inbox.  She’d just been too busy to read it.

It took me a minute to let this settle.

Had I not badgered her with a second email, she would have prepared the room and waited in vain, squandering income and perhaps a substitute client.  All because she was “too busy.”

A little research revealed that this is not an isolated incident.  May is always the month when the calendar goes crazy.  Year-end reviews, celebrations, fall planning, graduations, weddings, Mother’s Day, final book group meetings, exams, move-out days…

This year, though, we are in overdrive.

The mask mandates are over, the traffic is heavier than ever, and people are hurrying — everywhere.  We are too busy to read emails, too busy to show up at events for which we’ve reserved tickets, too busy to read books, too busy to sleep.  We are so busy we are going backwards in all the ways that matter to our souls – we are reactive, restless, hypervigilant and ineffective, all at the same time.

As I emerged from my bout of illness, I decided to claim a new mantra:  ONLY WHAT MATTERS

And this is the only way I know to stop the spinning, and regain essential sanity:

First, I need to stop.

Then, for a modest moment each day, I accept the quiet invitation to silence, and ask myself these two questions: 

 

Do you believe in what you are doing?  Or are you just doing it?

 

When I show up, my heart is there to take me back in.   I know almost immediately what needs to change, or let go of, or accepted.

But I have to show up.

Simple.  Try a space of silence each day this summer.  Do it before the house wakes up, over coffee, with a book of poems or simply with the houseplants.

Entering silence with others can be a powerful antidote as well.  There is something in the synergy of people together in contemplative prayer, or writing, or reading poetry, that reduces the voices of hurry and false urgency.  Find a meditation center, a retreat house, a short course.  With a guide, it becomes easier to find that core fulcrum of sanity, grace, and ease wherein you rediscover for yourself what I seek each and every day: “ONLY WHAT MATTERS.”