Working With Undone Tasks

The Temple pond has frozen over. Nearby stands one large planter that should have been moved to the shelter of the garage long ago. I’m hoping it has not already cracked from the freezing of its wet soil. Again today, I vow to roll the hand-truck down and take it to the safety of the garage. It’s a ten-minute task that has been on ‘my list’ for weeks. Today, I also want to get some exercise, use the aging vegetables in the refrigerator before they disintegrate, go through the piles of paper on my desk and try to install the honeycomb shades whose ‘easy installation’ defeated me yesterday. It would be good to go shopping, make notes for a sermon I’m preaching in January and begin the campaign to raise money to buy a new snow-blower for the Temple. I’m sure there will be enough time……

Our lives are filled with things to do—things we should do, things we could do—things we want to do, things we don’t want to do. There are always too many. Sometimes, when contemplating the multitude that surrounds me, I feel beleaguered and overwhelmed. But once I had a waking dream of walking into the middle of a ballroom. Lovely music was playing and all the things of my life were in a circle around me. I was happy to see them all and I got to choose whom I wanted to dance with. As I slowly turned around, encountering all the things I could and should do, I might do and must do, I was able to notice and act on what called to me. I danced for a while with one, then gracefully moved onto the next.

This was a new possibility—that the choice was up to me and that I could and should use my intuition to choose. This contradicted my default association with choosing whom to dance with: all the ones I don’t choose will be disappointed and angry. From this perspective I must choose everything and everyone at the same time. But choosing everything at once means standing frozen in the middle. Or choosing everything means rushing from one to the next in sequential dissatisfaction and agitation.

What if (and this appears to be my new mantra – see yesterday’s poem) I really did get to choose? And it was just fine?

I’m reminded of Marshall Rosenberg’s insistence on the power of owning the power of our choices. Part of the lovely framework he calls Nonviolent Communication is making sure that we are consciously owning our responsibility for doing what we are doing.

We often use the language of ‘have to.’ We might say ‘I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning, but I had to to make breakfast for my family.’ While this may feel accurate, it hides a deeper truth and there is a cost in using this language. ‘Have to’ is the language of resentment and blame. Rosenberg doesn’t deny there are consequences to our actions and non-actions, but he insists that, even when the choices are unappealing, we are still choosing and that owning the power of our choosing is essential in a healthy and fulfilling life.

Rosenberg went so far as to make a list of all the things he didn’t want to do and then committed to find some way to have someone else do it, find a reason that he really did want to do it, or simply not do it. Going back to the example of getting out of bed to make breakfast for the family, you actually have many choices. You could start a rotation with all the members of your family that are competent to make breakfast. Or you could remember how much you love nourishing your family and giving them all a good start as they begin their days and choose to continue. Or you could announce that you are no longer taking responsibility for their morning meal. These are just a few of the choices available to you. The important thing to remember is that they are all your choices.

No one is forcing you to do what you are doing. Using the language of ‘have to’ is inaccurate and creates a greater sense of powerlessness that diminishes the natural dignity of our lives. Mary Oliver says: ‘Tell me, how is it you will spend your one wild and precious life?’ And we spend our lives moment by moment. Most are not grand and flashy, but these moment by moment choices are how a life is lived—how we spend our lives.

I wonder what I will choose today? Going out in the bracing cold of the morning for the satisfaction of tending to the garden and taking care of the beautiful things of my life is beginning to sound more and more attractive. Who knows, maybe the planter will finally reach the shelter of the garage…