Too Much To Do

It’s been a squirrely few days for me. While the warm and delicious spring weather has melted all but the most stubborn piles of snow, I have felt overwhelmed and lost amid all the to-do lists of my life. I have lost my sense of what is most important and have been wandering in a world of a thousand equally urgent things calling out to be done.

Of course, there is always more to do than we have time to do.

Of course, this statement is not necessarily true. Or perhaps it is only true when we make certain assumptions. Perhaps any statement that presents itself as presenting the obvious truth should be approached with caution. ‘Of course’ encourages the mind to travel the familiar pathways of opinion rather than consider afresh the matter at hand. A warning sign for the careful traveler.

‘Always’ should probably be another alarm-bell for the aware reader and thinker. ‘Always’ statements can be quite comforting as they lead our mind toward the fantasyland of a dependable world that conforms to our understanding. Nothing ‘always’ happens. Some things, like the coming of spring, may happen on a fairly regular basis—we can safely plant our seeds at a certain time—except that sometimes snow comes in May as it has on occasion.

So then, what is this ‘more to do?’ Is it that my mind can always imagine things I could do? In a split second, I can imagine having breakfast, reading a book, responding to email, having a conversation with a friend and going for a walk. Yet, as I think ahead to this morning, I know I probably won’t have time to do all these things. I will, most likely, have to choose.

And what is this time that I have or don’t have to do or not to do? There is this moment of living action in which I am sitting on a brown faux-leather couch with a laptop in my lap and a cup of tea that sits patiently on the bench beside me. Is this ‘my’ time? And what about all the time I can imagine having or not having?

Today will be a ‘busy’ day. Really?

We order the world with the thoughts of our mind, and then we complain at the order of the world. There are days when I seem to ‘do’ more things than other days. Or would it be more accurate to say that some days I’m more active than others? I suppose some days even have more breaths in them than other days – when I’m moving and my muscles call for deeper breaths at a quicker pace.

But can you find busyness except in some combination of images in the mind and feelings in the body at this moment? The mind in this moment dreams my past and my future—makes infinite predictions of what will happen and what won’t happen. Each instant I am doing one thing and not another.

Now that I have thoroughly confused myself, I feel a little lighter. Today I will do some things and the things I do and the thoughts I think will be my life—the life that I create together with the world that I encounter. Sometimes at ease, sometimes feeling lost. Today, I’ll try to just follow my feet and see where they lead. I’ll ignore the opinions of the many others that reside in my head and trust the emerging moment to lead me truly.