routine

I like routine. I like to know where I am going and when I am going to get there. I like to know dates and times and details, although I never appear to ask many questions. I like to know what time I get up, what I am wearing and what I will eat, in what order I will shower and brush my teeth in the morning. I like to have time to play music, to watch television and I like to know if my emails are checked or not.

Yet despite all this, I would like to think myself quite laid back. It doesn’t really bother me if details of my day change because I’ve gotten so used to having plans and then have them change, it is no longer a surprise to me. I’ve gotten used, or possibly even complacent with, the fact that my God can change what He likes and whenever He sees fit.

So why is it that I love routine, yet my days seem to continually be lost? How is it that time can slip past me and into oblivion, or wherever it is that time ends up at the end of its span, when I seem to have such a tight grasp of it? Consider it like this; holding sand. The tighter you close your fist around the grains, the quicker it slips away from you. Despite your desperate attempts to keep on to what you have your hand around, it falls away, through the gaps between your fingers and runs down to where it came. But hold out your hand, cup your palm and it sits there quite content until you decide to turn your wrist and pour it out again.

The longer I seem to plan my days, or events, or even weeks, the quicker they go. For the past two years I have lived from year to year planning what I will do the next. I started off this year with the thought of what I will do the next, always hoping to come to some sort of conclusion in my life, finally finding my ‘home’ or ‘calling’ when in fact, everything I need right here, right now, is right here and right now.

I spent my summer thinking about this year ahead of me, in the midst of many things half undone. My flight wasn’t paid for with real money, half the department were waiting on tender hooks, even in the final days right up until we left Texas for Canada, waiting for their Visas. In those days I lived from weekend to weekend, slipping slowly into the world’s mentality of ‘if I can just make it through this week’. It quite frankly wasted my time. I not only wasted good opportunities, but good weather, good memories to be had and a closer relationship with God. Each day I thought about how to make it to 4o clock, trying desperately to coax my mind to wander to pass the time-missing out on opportunities to share my life and faith with those around me in my office.

It’s interesting that we use the words ‘spent’ and ‘wasted’ when we mention time. We ‘discard’ our time, we ‘use’ our time to whatever means, we don’t just live in time, or use it to measure, not only are we in a spacio temporal frame, we live in a constant opportunity that offers us to use to its full extent, our free will. Every waking moment, and even sleeping ones, we have choices to make. Either we can use our time for ourselves, for both positive and negative outcomes, we also have a choice on whether or not to use it to make a difference, whether it be for the physical world, or for those that dwell in it.

So I organise my time, mostly subconsciously and probably so that I have some sort of control in my life that often seems to have little or none. I make sure that I shower daily, and I make sure that I eat. I make sure that my parents and I are in some sort of communication, I make sure that I check my emails, update my accounts, read my book, watch some movies, I make sure that I regularly have some practice with whatever I feel like playing that day, I make sure I’m with my friends, I make sure I keep in touch with those I love that are at home and yet, somehow, the grains that I perceive to be important stay in my palm, when those that are essential slip away.
Some questions have been surrounding me lately. Mostly asking the ‘why’ question and challenging me to re think my motives in my actions and beliefs. So maybe really, my time ‘wasted’ wasn’t really wasted at all? It does not link directly with my physical actions, rather the frame of my mind and the priorities of my thoughts. My lack of time management is caused by a stray and frayed mindset-one that is not thinking on the One that keeps me in perfect peace.