Take time for family

There was a line in the poem that accompanied my last blog post that urged us to take time for family, because we would “miss them immeasurably when they are gone.”

Over the past week or so, I have been spending time with my family, something we haven’t managed to be able to do for a really long time.

It has been brilliant.

It reminded me of a story about an older man who watched a younger man who seemed always to be busy and who was so consumed with work and other things that he never seemed to have time for his family.

One Saturday morning, the old man stopped the younger man as he was picking up a coffee before scurrying off to work and asked him to sit for a while, he wanted to talk to him.

“I sat down one day and I added this all up,” the old man said.

“The average person lives, approximately, about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less but that’s the average. So, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900 – the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime.”

The old man said that it had taken him until he was 55 years old to even think about this in any detail.

By that time he had already lived through over 2800 Saturdays.

“I got to thinking,” he said, “that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy shop and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit a bunch of shops to gather up 1000 marbles. Then, I took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container in my kitchen. Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away.”

“I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.”

Then, the old man stopped the younger man in his tracks when he added.

“Now let me tell you one last thing before I go. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.”

The young man decided he could give work a miss that Saturday. He went home and spent the day with his family.

None of us have any control over time.

No matter what we think, we cannot save it or store it away.

So it is important to get our priorities right – and spend it wisely.

Take time…

I was on the plane heading on holiday this week when I realised that, from the list of all the things I just had to get done before I left, getting a post up on my blog was one of the things that had been left undone.

Have you ever thought about that? How, we very often spend the lead up to time away in a constant tizzy of trying to get things done before we go.

As I reflected on the plane about the missed blog, my head started onto other things on the list and all of a sudden I began to fret over things that really should not have been occupying my head space.

I was reminded of a story of a small town that was in imminent danger from a nearby volcano.

The town didn’t have a mayor or any kind of a leader, so one man took it upon himself to try to put a plan in place.

He gathered everyone together and said that he would try to help everyone save themselves and as many of their treasured possessions as they could.

Those who were more able, first of all helped those who were less able to get to safety.

Then they worked to gather up the items people wanted saved and they packed them on a truck to leave. When the truck was packed up, the younger and more able bodied jumped on board and headed off to safety as well.

Now, there wasn’t enough room for everyone, so the man who had organised it all, urged everyone else to go ahead and insisted that they do so.

He was the only one left, but he would follow right behind them he said. After he had walked back to gather his own belongings, the volcano erupted and the man who had helped get others away from danger, was trapped and eventually perished.

The man had spent so much time saving everyone else that he didn’t have time to save himself.

And sometimes it can feel that we are doing that.

Always feeling like we are jumping from one thing to the next for someone else, until things come crashing down all around us.

Sometimes we forget that before we can save the world, we need to first save ourselves.

We need to take time.

I’m on holiday this week so the blog is late. There may or may not be another post before I get home.

I’m promising nothing, my priorities for the next few weeks are entirely different.

And I am going to take some time…

Collecting Pebbles

I often get drawn to a song by the lyrics as much as I do by the melody and over the past week a song from a singer called Joan Osborne has been in my head for some reason.

 

In Ireland at least, Joan Osborne was pretty much a one-hit wonder with her song ‘One of Us’ which at the time I found kinda quirky so I bought her album ‘Relish.’

 

There I discovered great songs like her version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Man in the Long Black Coat’ and the song that was in my head this week, “Spider Web.”

 

The gist of that song was a dream about the late, great, Ray Charles who could see just fine.

 

But there was a downside, because now that he could see, Ray was no longer able to sing.

 

One of the most memorable lines in the song carries its entire message.

 

“Be careful what you’re wishing for, ‘cause when you gain, you just might lose.”

 

When I was writing last week about happiness being the point, I mentioned how we often spend our days in pursuit of happiness.

 

As I pondered on that a little more this week, I realised that happiness can often be found in the past – in great memories.

 

But I was also reminded of a story about the touchstone – a small pebble that was reputedly able to turn any metal to gold.

 

According to the story, the pebble could be found on the shores of the Black Sea, among all of the thousands of other pebbles there that looked just like it.

 

The person who would discover it, the story says, would find the touchstone because it would feel warm while the rest would feel cold to touch.

 

And so the tale goes of a man who, having discovered the secret of the touchstone, sold all he had and camped on the beach where he planned to test the pebbles.

 

He knew that he couldn’t pick up a pebble and throw it back down again if it felt cold, otherwise he could end up picking up the same pebble over and over. So, he chose instead to pick up pebbles and if they were cold, he would toss each one into the sea.

 

The man spent days, weeks, months and then years, picking up the pebbles, tossing them into the sea until one day he picked up the touchstone, but now in the habit of just throwing each one he’d picked into the sea, he had it tossed away before it was too late.

 

The man had spent all that time, all that effort in pursuit of the one thing he wanted, but in the end, even though he had got his hands on that very thing he craved, he was no better off.

 

Such is the pursuit of happiness. Searching for that one magic pebble, that one thing you desire more than anything.

 

The song suggests that when you gain, you just might lose and if you get a chance to listen to the rest of the song lyrics you’ll realise bringing back his sight had not brought Ray any joy.

 

As I thought about it this week and I realised how much happiness there is to be found in looking backwards, I understood that it was because those happy memories were created at the time by putting a positive focus on each pebble-like life experience.

 

By putting the focus on all of the good moments life brings.

 

As a result now, each and every one of those pebbles is a precious gem.

 

It made me understand that we will only ever be able to look back to happier days, by trying our best to be happy in the present.

 

It made me appreciate that while it is good to have dreams and goals and aspirations, I really must still be careful what I’m wishing for.

 

Collecting Pebbles

 

When I close my eyes,

set sail to cast for memories,

I will always come back

to those happy days

when my fingers dug

through the soft wet sand

for buried treasure.

Each pebble I found

as precious as a diamond,

left an imprint on my heart.

Built a pathway back,

to a world where I knew nothing

but contentment…

(Liam Porter 2017)

 

 

Happiness is the point

I was thinking recently that most of us really spend our days in pursuit of happiness, often not realising that we have it right under our noses in the first place.

 

We are driven by trying to change things. Trying to look for something different, to try and find that elusive magic thing that will make us happy.

 

I once saw a drawing online, a fairly basic sketch of a little character carrying a big jar of happiness.

 

The other character in the picture asked him – “Where did you find that?” – to which he replied – “Nowhere. I made it myself.”

 

In ‘Joy’ one of her many brilliant songs, Juliet Turner says in her opening lines that she’d been searching high and low, but as of tonight she’s calling off the search.

 

The chorus line of her song has the lines: “I don’t know where you’re taking me, but you’re the one who’s making me happy. Happiness is the point.”

 

Those four last words – Happiness is the Point – is an earworm that I try to keep in my head, but I’ve also realised the futility of spending all my days searching high and low for it.

 

Nobel prize-winning Belgian playwright and poet, Count Maurice Maeterlinck highlights this in ‘The Bluebird’ where the children Tyltyl and Mytyl set out in search of the bluebird of happiness, not realising that the bird they had at home in a cage was it all along.

 

And the moral really is that happiness is not a possession that we should spend all our time searching for, but rather it is a blessing in everything we experience.

 

Recently I have been reading a wonderful book by Bernadette Jiwa called Story Driven – and I wondered how much more happy we all might be if we knew exactly who we are and what we stand for – and were then really content in ourselves.

 

On the very first page of Bernadette’s book are the following lines.

 

“The people who create fulfilling lives and careers—the ones we respect, admire and try to emulate—choose an alternative path to success. They have a powerful sense of identity. They don’t worry about differentiating themselves from the competition or obsess about telling the right story. They tell the real story instead.”

 

That sense of identity must be a truly powerful force and one that is within the grasp of all of us.

 

Instead of waiting for a tragedy to remind us of how grateful we should be for what we have (and it is always when tragedy strikes that we are reminded), we should instead take a look around us, be content in who we are and what we have – and use that as our starting point to move forward.

 

The great philosopher Plato summed it up in just one line:

 

“The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depend on himself and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily.”

 

Look around you and realise how happy you should be right now.

 

And then realise that’s only the start.

 

There are endless possibilities for more.

 

My own poem ‘Morning’ summed it up as follows:

 

Morning

I woke with the dawn, but it was still too late

to catch my dreams.

They had fallen through my sleep

slipped away in the darkness.

It took me time.

To see what they had left me.

Another morning’s light.

A day of endless possibilities.