A Year of Discovery

December 31, 2014 · 6 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags: , , ,

Last December I set myself an ambitious task for 2014—to find and comment on a positive blog every day. I had been wanting to read more uplifting and inspirational material online, but hadn’t known where to find it. My site was less than two years old, and I hadn’t yet written many entries or commented much on other blogs. I wanted to do more, building connections and broadening my perspective. My goal was to improve myself while having a positive impact on the culture with my writing.

I had a conversation with a friend (as described in this post) about setting small changes in motion that radiate out to the world, simply by brightening one’s own life. That gave me the idea of going on a virtual quest to find positive blogs, while keeping a chronicle of my discoveries for the benefit of both myself and my readers. I named this project the Random Kindness Blog Tour because I didn’t know what I might find, which made it random, and also because bloggers enjoy unexpected kind comments. I chose Kindness and Positivity as my words of intention for 2014.

To give myself impetus to follow through, I publicly committed to it on my blog as a New Year’s resolution. That felt scary at first because of the unknown time requirements—I had no way of knowing how long it might take to find a positive blog on any given day! What if I got overwhelmed and couldn’t keep up the pace, or if it took so much time that I couldn’t do anything else all year? But I decided to look at it in a playful way (as discussed here) just like going on an adventure.

After the project got underway, I found that it wasn’t nearly as difficult or time-consuming as my worries had made it out to be. Positive bloggers naturally attract commenters who have an optimistic mindset, plus they often include positive sites in their blogroll. So I always had plenty of links to follow and new sites to investigate. Even if I got busy and missed a day’s entry, I always managed to find two positive blogs the next day to catch up. As the page of links got longer, it became a powerful visual reminder that the world is full of good people—all one has to do is look! That in itself helped to banish gloomy thoughts.

I found many inspiring sites and made new friends, including the Nurturing Thursday bloggers—I’ve started thinking of them like an online support group. Their encouraging words have helped me to deal better with disruptions, work on getting clutter under control, arrange my house more comfortably, and remember to appreciate the moment. As a result, I’ve had more mental energy to put toward my writing this year, along with reading and commenting on more blogs.

I’ve also been reminding myself that not everything needs to be done right away, on a schedule, or perhaps even at all. Today’s world is so full of possibilities, it can be hard to decide what to do. Having so many options leads to anxiety about making wrong choices, wasting time, and not getting things done. Usually it’s needless anxiety because nothing calamitous would happen anyway. Mistakes are more likely to be useful learning experiences than disasters, and neglected tasks may not matter much as circumstances change.

Although the fast pace of modern society can make it seem like a constant rush to keep up, there’s really no need to let life get so hectic. Incremental changes can have powerful, far-reaching effects without consuming huge amounts of time. Persistence is what’s needed, along with setting clear intentions and allowing enough quiet, unhurried moments to notice the beauty and abundance all around.

Bots and Betweens

September 23, 2014 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: , ,

I recently read an article about a “Burger Bot” that is being developed to automate fast-food restaurants. The author lamented that because so much work can be done with machines, it won’t be long before there are no jobs left for real human beings.

Of course, that line of thought has been worrying people ever since the Industrial Age got underway. Advances in technology have been displacing large numbers of workers for centuries. Our society no longer needs blacksmiths, carriage makers, or many other occupations that once were commonplace. Most of us don’t live on farms in small towns anymore. So, we have to find a niche in today’s complicated economy, and that’s not easy.

Although increased production has made more resources available for new industries to develop, it has been a continuing struggle for this expansion to happen quickly enough to create all the jobs we need. Because of population growth, even in years when many new jobs were created, we’ve always had more workers competing to fill them. Modern transportation and communication technologies have made it possible for companies to move jobs anywhere, bringing even the most remote areas into the global economy. Civil rights laws also have increased the number of people in the workforce—in particular, women.

That’s a lot of transitions to deal with at once. No wonder there is so much anxiety among today’s workers. Although lower birthrates will eventually reduce the number of people seeking jobs as the global economy continues to expand, we’re not there yet.

I remember taking part in a conversation on a forum about ten years ago, started by a woman who enjoyed having a lot of projects to work on. She wrote that when she reached the end of a project and hadn’t yet moved on to another one, it always left her feeling anxious. “The Betweens” was what she called that feeling—a sense of displacement and uncertainty, wanting to do something more but not knowing what came next.

Right now, I would describe our society as mired in the Betweens. Many of the old ways of doing things have outlived their usefulness, but it’s not yet clear what will replace them. All that uncertainty leaves us with vague feelings of impending calamity, as if we need to fix everything right away and it’s going to turn into a huge disaster if we can’t get it all sorted now.

But the upside of the Betweens is that they give us an opportunity for valuable reflection, if we can get past the anxiety and look calmly at what’s going on around us. The Betweens are always happening on a smaller scale in our everyday lives, when we finish a task or errand and haven’t yet moved on to the next one. Often we get in the habit of rushing from one thing to another, without taking time to reflect. Even though we may not consciously notice the anxiety, it’s there anyway as we hurry through our days juggling a schedule packed with chores and obligations, getting distracted and annoyed whenever something slows us down.

This year I’ve been making an effort to change my perspective—to reframe those small daily moments of waiting in long grocery checkout lines, etc., as natural pauses in life’s busy flow and to practice mindfulness when they occur. I want to appreciate the Betweens, to cherish them—to feel grateful for the little unplanned gifts of grace with which they bless my life. Having time to slow down, get my thoughts in order, and be present in the moment really is a blessing, even in the checkout line!

And I am hopeful that our society will develop more creative appreciation for the Betweens, too. Changes and transitions aren’t necessarily bad; we just need time, perspective, and mental energy to deal with them. We have so much power to shape both our personal lives and the world around us into better and healthier patterns, but first we need to take enough time to consider where we want to be!

As workforce growth slows in the coming decades and the global population begins to drop, we’ll likely find ourselves in a much-changed world where companies struggle to cope with persistent labor shortages. Industries that rely on having large numbers of unskilled low-wage workers, such as fast food, will crash unless automation can fill the gap. I believe it’ll turn out to be very good for future workers, having Burger Bots make their lunches while they pursue better-paid and more interesting careers.

I’ll also note that although the Millennial generation often gets criticized for having a sense of entitlement, they generally understand that they are in control of their own lifestyles and career choices. We could all use more of that.

Marriage: Some Assembly Required

October 28, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: , ,

Even in a time of tremendous cultural flux, when many of the historical reasons for marriage have become outdated, there are still people getting married. One might wonder why, given the advantages of staying single in today’s world. Children are very expensive, unlike in the past when they worked on their parents’ farm. Having a family restricts the career opportunities available to modern parents, both because of the time involved in caring for children and because of the expectation that a responsible parent should bring home a steady paycheck, rather than being free to take chances and follow passions when building a career. Marriage has economic pitfalls even for childless couples, who may not want to pursue promising job opportunities in other cities because it would be hard for the tag-along spouse to find a good position. And there’s always the risk of divorce, which can be messy both emotionally and financially, even when a couple has no children.

Some people simply dismiss the whole idea of marriage as an antiquated relic of primitive times, which continues to exist only because traditional society has conditioned us to want it. But I think those who opt for marriage often do so based on the perception that it is a promise of stability in a rapidly changing world. Even when we don’t feel confident about navigating the huge cultural shifts going on around us, marriage (if all goes well) gives us a constant, predictable home environment. The family unit becomes a micro-culture with its own comforting traditions and rituals.

I recently had a dream that dealt with these themes. Although dream interpretation based on cultural archetypes mostly fell out of fashion along with psychoanalysis a few decades ago, it can sometimes prove interesting. In this particular dream, I was assembling a four-poster bed by putting on the posts. After that, I was on a dock at the river, putting oars in a boat (a double scull) that my husband and I had rowed over the summer.

In dream interpretation, the number four can represent symmetry and stability. Both pairs of oars must be rowed in a synchronized motion to make forward progress along a river, which is a symbol often interpreted to mean the river of life. Losing one’s grip on the oar handles, or bumping an oar into a submerged log or other hazard, can easily cause a scull to tip over—it’s a very narrow boat that needs the oars for balance.

When not in use, oars are stored separately from the boat. They must be put into the oarlocks each time the boat is rowed, and the rowers must carefully check to make sure the oars are fastened securely. This can be seen as an assembly process, much as the four-poster bed in my dream had to be assembled. Both a double scull and a bed are places where a couple would be. So I would interpret the dream as referring to the stability provided by marriage, which requires careful assembly.

Of course, not everyone looks upon marriage as a source of stability. Some take a very different view and consider marriage a luxury reserved for those who already are financially stable. Even though today’s families are much smaller than in the past and women usually work outside the home, raising children in the modern world can be very costly. With so much uncertainty in the global economy, some young adults feel that they should wait until they have well-established careers and substantial savings before they even consider marriage. Depending on the extent of their financial anxiety, they may never reach a point where they feel comfortable with it.

There’s no disputing the fact that it is stressful to get married and start a family while living paycheck to paycheck. But it’s important to keep things in perspective, rather than letting financial anxiety take over one’s life to the extent that everything seems too much of a risk. Way back when our ancestors were raising their families in tiny villages, they had very few material possessions, and their lives were far more perilous than ours. Children often died in infancy, women often died in childbirth, and men often died in war. Still, our ancestors did their best to cope with whatever happened to come their way. Because nothing in their society ever seemed to change much, they didn’t have our worries about living in an unstable world.

Unlike our ancestors, we can’t reasonably expect to lead simple and unchanging lives. Some degree of anxiety about the unknown is inevitable. We deal with it by seeking stability in our relationships, our finances, our daily habits and rituals, and whatever else we may feel gives us more control over our environment. Choices that work well for some people, such as marriage, are not necessarily going to suit others. And with all the options available in today’s society, it may take some time to discover what works and what doesn’t. In any event, when pursuing our goals, I believe it’s helpful to keep in mind both that we have more personal power than we may realize and that, as we go through life, some assembly is required.

Life’s Too Long for Worrying

October 13, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

Every culture has its folk sayings that help people to get through their days. We rely on them to give our problems a familiar, manageable feeling. Don’t worry about the small stuff, we’re often told. Life’s too short for that.

Back when our ancestors’ lives were indeed short and perilous, this was a very useful way to remind people not to get overly dramatic about small annoyances or disagreements. Why complain today when you might easily die tomorrow from an outbreak of plague, find yourself in the path of an invading army putting your village to the torch, or get eaten by a hungry lion or bear when you went out to gather firewood?

In today’s more civilized world, however, we are far more likely to die of some lingering old-age ailment than of plague or warfare. Our communities have lost many of the close ties that once came from defending against shared perils. It’s hard to imagine what the future will look like, or how we’ll deal with it. Although modern-day humans no longer have to worry about our children dying of smallpox or being captured by an enemy raiding party and sold as slaves, there’s plenty of space in our minds for lesser anxieties to take up residence. Workplace worries, family spats, and political disputes get blown way out of proportion. Perhaps we try to tell ourselves life’s too short for that—but it isn’t. Not anymore.

The primitive parts of our brains still are hard-wired to be on the lookout for anything that might want to eat us. Far below the level of conscious thought, we search for patterns in whatever surrounds us. If it doesn’t all fit neatly together into something recognizable, then we get anxious. Mix that primitive reaction with the massive complexity of today’s society, and it’s no wonder modern humans have sky-high stress levels. Subconsciously, we feel as if there might be unseen predators crouching nearby at any moment, poised to spring. Because we know there really aren’t any, we find other ways to explain our fears. Maybe that lurking enemy becomes our neighbor who votes for a different political party.

How can we convince ourselves that these anxieties are just small stuff and that we’re not in fact on the brink of catastrophe? “Life is short” doesn’t seem to be useful advice in the context of reassuring ourselves that there are no monsters under society’s bed. Such advice might instead make us worry more because it reinforces the subconscious feeling that we could get killed at any moment by something we never even saw coming.

The main challenge for modern humans is learning to deal with change and complexity. So I believe we could use a new folk saying to suit today’s circumstances: Life’s too long for worrying. When we get hung up on our grudges and fears, we might easily wake up one morning 40 years later and realize how much time and energy we wasted obsessing about small problems that could have been solved long ago, if we hadn’t convinced ourselves they were gigantic obstacles.

Although the complexity of our world may often leave us feeling anxious, it also gives us many opportunities to make positive changes. We have a vast array of choices that were unimaginable even a generation ago, and we’ll have exponentially more choices as time passes and technology continues to improve. Having so many options may cause us to feel overwhelmed; but because we have such long lives, we can accomplish very ambitious goals without doing everything at once. All it really takes is finding one way to do something constructive each day. Over time the small changes add up, and we discover that we’ve created far more than we might have imagined.

Glaring Incompatibilities

November 26, 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

My family set up the Christmas tree over the long weekend, next to the fireplace as usual, while the kids were home from college. It’s an old artificial tree that we have had since they were little. This year, instead of putting on plain basic strands of lights, we bought new LED lights shaped like evergreen cones. I found their soft colors and decorative shape to be a pleasant change from the old-style Christmas tree lights.

So far, so good. But we have two sconces over the mantel, with bright incandescent bulbs. Turning them on at the same time as the new Christmas lights produced a horrid glare. The problem was easily solved, of course, by turning off the sconces and leaving the room dark except for the tree lights.

But I wonder what might have happened if we’d had incandescent bulbs only on the other side of the room, farther away from the tree. We might not have consciously noticed that the two different kinds of lights clashed. Maybe we’d have spent the entire holiday season feeling that there was something not right, but never knowing what had put our nerves on edge.

Modern technology can irritate people’s senses in ways that are below the threshold of conscious perception. We’re all born with senses that evolved over many millennia to process natural inputs such as those from forests, grasslands, and other natural vistas. But instead we find ourselves in cities that look very different from the surroundings our ancestors knew. Humans are a very adaptable species; but although we can learn to function in many different environments, it’s kind of like installing new software on a computer with an older operating system. There are bound to be incompatibilities, like not being able to deal with my new LED lights and the existing incandescent bulbs at the same time, as well as unexpected glitches.

As science advances our knowledge of the human brain and how it processes sensory inputs, I expect researchers will learn how to design more comfortable environments. That should go a long way toward reducing our stress levels. Perhaps the homes and workspaces of the future will be creatively designed to give us feelings of serenity, confidence, and joy.

Danger Signals

November 1, 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

When I was five years old and thought I knew everything, I put together a construction-paper traffic light with green at the top. Then I told my kindergarten teacher that all traffic lights ought to be made that way because the green light was the most important. After all, green meant that you could get to places faster, while red meant that you just had to sit and wait. Red lights were boring. Who needed them, anyway?

It took me a few more years to grasp the concept of danger well enough to understand why red lights had to be on top. Green lights, although useful for showing where intersections are, don’t require that we do anything differently. A red light grabs our attention, shouting: Danger! Stop! Right now!

I’ve sometimes wondered whether humans evolved to react to praise and criticism in much the same way. No matter how many compliments we get, we’re likely to take them for granted. As with green lights, they just go by as part of the social landscape, confirming in general that we’re on the right road. We don’t give them much weight in our minds. Criticism, however, weighs much more heavily; it can sting for many years. Even if we consciously know that an old mistake doesn’t matter, it still bothers us long after the fact.

Why do we find criticism so troubling? I suspect we may be hard-wired to process it as a danger signal, which would have made sense in the small villages of the past. Because primitive humans’ daily tasks were very simple and repetitive, there wouldn’t have been much reason for either compliments or gripes about the quality of a person’s work. As long as it got done, it was probably good enough. Criticism would have consisted of pointing out dangerous errors, such as picking a poisonous mushroom or not noticing a lion’s tracks near the river. The message would have been: Danger! Pay attention! Don’t ever make that mistake again, or somebody is going to get killed!

In today’s world, criticism usually involves trivial oversights or harmless differences in appearance and social behavior. Instead of the rare and memorable event that it might have been in our ancestors’ villages, it has become commonplace. Remembering criticism for years no longer has any significant survival value; on the contrary, it’s much more likely to shorten our lives by making us susceptible to depression and anxiety.

What’s to be done about it? Many people take medications to cope with depression and anxiety. Others self-medicate with alcohol, street drugs, cigarettes, coffee, et cetera. Finding comfort in food also is common. Some of us seek to modify our reactions to distressing situations by way of traditional psychotherapy or behavioral therapy. Another approach is to distract ourselves from our worries, such as with yoga, meditation, art and music, fiction, video games, gambling, sports, and hobbies in general—or perhaps by compulsively working long hours.

Of course, however effective they may be, all of these approaches to dealing with depression and anxiety are simply coping mechanisms. They don’t solve, or even acknowledge, the underlying problem of living in a highly stressful environment that bears little resemblance to the conditions under which humans evolved. As individuals, there’s not much we can do to avoid criticism and all the other stresses of modern society unless we choose to live as hermits or otherwise drastically isolate ourselves, which, needless to say, would have major drawbacks.

So the question to be asked is this: How can we change our culture to bring about a healthier social environment? On the specific issue of criticism and its effects, I believe we need to end the bullying and casual insults that pervade our social sphere. Today’s politics has degenerated into a lot more name-calling than substance. The Internet is full of nastiness. Although school officials and employers are starting to recognize that bullying is a serious problem, much more still needs to be done. It’s no wonder that so many of us struggle with depression and anxiety. But when we do, we should keep in mind that it’s chiefly the culture, rather than ourselves, that has something wrong and needs to be fixed.

Restoring Balance

September 30, 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

As we go through our days dutifully checking off the various tasks on our calendars, we may look around and notice that a few things have fallen by the wayside. Perhaps we haven’t written any blog posts for months, or the supplies we bought for a project we planned last year are still sitting at the back of the closet. Whatever it is, we start wondering where all the time went. We’re likely to tell ourselves, in a familiar modern lament, that our lives have gotten too busy and need to be brought back into balance.

Sometimes we really do get overscheduled to such an extent that we can barely function. But more often, I believe, the actual issue isn’t one of time management at all; it has more to do with all those nagging anxieties at the back of our minds, which accumulate until we can’t turn our mental focus to anything else.

We can make checklists for every imaginable daily task ’til the cows come home—but although that may help to manage the distraction and lack of focus often described as executive-functioning issues, I suspect there’s much more to the underlying problem than simply needing to organize our schedules more efficiently. We live in a hugely complex pressure-cooker society that has caused many of us to become, in the literal sense of the word, unbalanced. That is to say, we don’t feel confident in our ability to balance all the demands our society expects us to satisfy. And so our thoughts start to run in anxious frightened circles that distract us from getting our tasks done, causing us to worry even more—and the vicious cycle spirals downward.

In a bygone era, the natural rhythms of the days and seasons kept our ancestors’ lives in balance. Physically, they worked much harder than most of us can imagine. Their days were filled with strenuous, time-consuming chores as they struggled to bring in enough food to survive the winter. Their fears were much more immediate and concrete than ours: starvation, plague, tribal warfare, being attacked by wolves and bears. But although they experienced miseries that most of us thankfully will never have to face, their tasks were simple and predictable enough so that they didn’t have our modern-day anxieties. Their subconscious minds weren’t filled with worries about what they ought to be doing differently, how well they could measure up to society’s demands, et cetera. Whether they ate or got eaten on any particular day was up to Fate; they made whatever sacrifices they believed would keep the gods happy, and left it at that.

How can we cultivate our ancestors’ untroubled mindset in a world that has become vastly more complicated? I would say it begins with centering ourselves in the moment, so that our thoughts don’t habitually wander along negative paths. Meditation, exercise, and mindfulness can be helpful approaches to banishing persistent worries. They don’t necessarily require large amounts of time; it’s more a matter of arranging our daily routines in ways that provide for moments of peaceful reflection.

This morning, before I sat down to write this post, I got myself a cup of raspberry-flavored coffee and a whole wheat English muffin with raspberry jam. I thought about what good fortune it was to have these small comforts, how pleasant the coffee smelled, and how pretty the raspberry jam looked—bright sparkling red in the morning sunlight, with little seeds all throughout. One can’t simultaneously contemplate a raspberry seed and worry obsessively about some upcoming task or other. That simple fact seemed to be enough, at least for the moment, to bring my entire world into balance.

Room to Grow

May 11, 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

Last weekend I moved two hostas that I had planted in my front garden almost a decade ago. They were a gift from a neighbor who found that she had extras while she was doing her spring planting. Because I already had a few hostas of a different variety, I assumed that the new ones would be about the same size. Unfortunately, that proved not to be the case, as often happens with assumptions.

For the first few years, I admired the big glossy leaves of the new hostas, which were noticeably larger than the leaves of the other variety. After a while they grew together to form a big clump, and I thought that was okay because the older hostas also had grown close to each other. My husband mentioned that he liked the big ones. They looked very impressive, robust and healthy.

But they just kept on growing. I realized that I had a problem when they started overgrowing the front walkway. Because hostas are round plants with leaves growing out from the center, they can’t be trimmed along one side without ending up lopsided; so cutting them back was out of the question. Last summer their leaves stretched halfway across the concrete next to my porch steps. Visitors and pizza delivery people had to tread carefully to avoid stepping on them. Now that they had become so enormous, I was left with an embarrassing display of gardening foolishness in full view of all the neighbors. There was no doubt those hostas would have to be moved farther back in the garden to give them more room to grow.

I wasn’t looking forward to that chore, though, and I kept finding reasons to put it off. The heat of the summer wouldn’t be a good time to move plants; and once we got into the cooler autumn weather, there was always something going on that made a convenient excuse. Then it was winter and they dropped their leaves, allowing me to ignore them until the spring. I finally got around to moving them last weekend.

Relying on assumptions when we don’t have enough facts is, of course, human nature. It served our ancestors well for most of our history, when people often had to make immediate decisions on which their lives depended. Was it a hungry wolf in those rustling bushes, or was it a deer? Did that group of men from another tribe, coming into view over the hill, have plans to attack the village? Making snap judgments was a very useful survival skill in those days.

Now we have easy access to information, and most of us aren’t likely to find predators (human or otherwise) lurking near our homes when we step outside. Still, both our decision-making processes and the structure of our society took shape when life was much more precarious. We make assumptions all the time, just as our ancestors did; and when they are challenged, our first reaction is fear. We’re afraid of what might happen if we let ourselves get distracted thinking about other possibilities, only to find out that there really was a wolf in the bushes after all.

So when we’re told about a group of people who need more room to grow in our collective cultural garden, we don’t want to hear it. We react with denial: those big leaves can’t be taking up that much space, can they? Maybe we step on them sometimes, but hey, there’s got to be some way to shove them back where they belong and make sure they stay there. After all, they weren’t so much in the way before. And just think of the nuisance it would be to dig new holes!

Then after a while, our society grudgingly decides it’s time to stop putting off the chore, just as I did with my hostas last weekend. Even though I’d been dreading it and making excuses for the better part of a year, it wasn’t really that hard after all.

Time and its Telling

April 16, 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: , ,

Humans are a storytelling species. Even when we are not sharing stories with others, we’re full of internal narratives or “self-talk” by which we make sense of what’s going on around us. Sometimes we may talk out loud to ourselves; but more often, although we are silent, a constant dialogue goes on in our thoughts, describing our perceptions and sorting our thoughts into recognizable categories. We draw these categories in large part from the narratives our culture has taught us, often on a subconscious level. They may not always be accurate or to our benefit.

As a result, we’re likely to stress ourselves out unnecessarily by framing our experiences in terms of the popular complaints of our society. One of the most common ways this happens is in what we tell ourselves about time. The modern world is busier and more complicated than ever before. We have vastly more choices in our daily lives. This gives rise to free-floating anxieties that we can’t easily describe, and we end up expressing them in terms of not having control over our time:

“I’m too busy. There is too much going on. I don’t have time to get anything done.”

Our friends and family members are likely to respond—again, in a socially scripted way—by suggesting that we have too many obligations on our busy calendars and need to simplify our lives. While that’s not bad advice in itself, what often happens when we allow ourselves a few quiet, unhurried moments is that another cultural script promptly kicks in:

“I’m bored. There is nothing going on. I need to find something to do with my time.”

And round and round we go.

Time is, of course, neutral; it passes at the same rate regardless of what we happen to be doing. Our perceptions of time, however, are constantly changing in relation to our environment. For most of our history, people’s lives consisted of simple but time-consuming tasks such as hunting, gathering, and domestic chores. It would never have occurred to anyone to complain of boredom because there was always more work to be done. And because the work had a regular and predictable structure, with little room for individual choice, there was no reason to feel anxious about how one’s schedule was managed.

Nowadays, with all the options created by modern technology and our interconnected world, we have a multitude of scenarios playing out in our minds at all times as part of our internal dialogue; and we haven’t yet learned how to deal with it. There are so many choices that it has become overwhelming.

Last week a bird flew into my garage and couldn’t understand how to get back outside again. Even with both of the garage doors open and sunlight streaming in through the doors, the bird was so confused by the unfamiliar environment that it just fluttered around aimlessly. My husband tried yelling at the bird and waving a broom at it to chase it away, but that didn’t help at all—the bird only got more anxious and befuddled, while still not finding its way out. At last my husband hit on the idea of closing one of the garage doors. With only one possible exit, the bird promptly oriented itself and flew out.

Although humans (usually) have more sense than birds, I believe that we have a similar need for clear landmarks to guide us when we navigate our surroundings. In the context of time management and choosing among multiple alternatives, humans create such landmarks by developing routines and rituals. Those of us with an introverted temperament put more effort into organizing our homes and work spaces in predictable ways. Extroverts focus instead on social rituals, such as sports, shopping, and Friday night at the club. But the underlying motivation is the same—finding something that makes sense in a chaotic environment.

We need a new set of stories to explain our relationship with time. What can we tell ourselves about our ability to control and manage the choices available to us? How can we feel comfortable without always having to be in constant motion from one activity to another? Where can we find examples of how to live productively while looking upon time as an abundant resource?

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