ONE chooser, ONE decider, so MANY variables
Saturday, Jan. 18. 2020
Most days start with either a plan or a blank slate, not just for me, but for all of us.
For most people, that means details, times, too much to do, and not enough time for thinking from Monday to Friday, and for most of the same folks, a relatively blank slate for weekends.
Those who freelance, those who are retired, unemployed, underemployed or in hot pursuit of the next deal, the next transaction, the next piece of paid work – the lines between day and night, weekday and weekend day get blurry, overlap, and lose their original definition quite easily such that, when Saturday arrives, it seems like a week’s work must be cleared, triaged, or postponed to make way for weekend work.
Well, it’s here, the end of another busy week – the weekend, the Saturday morning or sleeping late, relaxing, hanging out, and huddling inside. Leaving the week behind. Choosing what kind of day to have.
So who decides what kind of day it will be?
For you, for the planet, for friends and family, and for strangers far way – who determines peace or pain, love or hate, construction or destruction, creation or inflation?
I’m not playing a word game – but maybe stretching too far, pulling the taffy too thin, to make a point.
Our day is not created for us, determined by others. This is neither accidental nor predictable, our day is the confluence of choices. Most of those choices are of our creation. First, there are habits – we’ve made a choice once, formed the pattern of practice which becomes the habit, and save ourselves the daily thought-work, we’ve just made them a habit, and we stick to it. The same with routines for hours of the day, days of the week, and occasions on our calendar – every one of those repeated choices is a product of a unique distinguishable decision. Celebrating a ‘big calendar day’ of our country, faith, or culture may appear to be a societal requirement or mass hysteria. Still, it is a choice – something quite different from shopping mania, feasting, worshipping, or celebrating. You see, those days go on with or without us. Those events happen – but only because people show up for them. Which is not to say you aren’t having a birthday if nobody remembers or shows up, but you have to admit that’s a very arbitrary and unnecessary non-event. The day that matters is the day of the birth. The rest are just calendar days and, if we’d never invented the calendar, we would not know when it was, and it would not matter.
I’ve perhaps strayed from my point…
Or made it.
For those choosing to work, work.
For those choosing to rest, rest.
For those with something to celebrate, celebrate.
Weekends should, in my view, always include these three elements – work, rest, celebration.
In that order.
But that’s for me.
For you?
Make whatever kind of day you want to have, because only one person makes these choices.
