It doesn’t matter how glorious and fulfilling and happy your life is, it’s still a balancing act. Even though it’s all things you want and things you love and things that you are committed to doing, there is still only one of you and only so much time in the day. So if life’s a dance you still need to dance it one step at a time. Sometimes it’s best to let it just flow, sometimes interpretive dance is the best way to get through it, and other times you really do need to choreograph things to make sure they all happen in the best way possible for everyone.
For most people life isn’t that up beat. It’s full of what I term Need To’s, Have To’s, and Get To’s. Need To’s are the staples that make the world go round and if they don’t get done things break down and go wrong. This includes paying the bills, making sure you eat, getting enough sleep, trips to the bathroom at intervals, etc. It can also include arriving where you need to be such as the lawyers, the classroom, and work depending on your situation. Need To’s really aren’t negotiable and are most of the time pretty time sensitive.
Have To’s are obligations of all sorts whether that’s due to relationships and keeping them from imploding, work and keeping yourself employed, promises you’ve made to yourself about goals or activities, organizations to which you are connected, and on and on. Have To’s land somewhere in a spectrum between the foundational “life will coming to a screeching halt if I don’t do this” and it would be nice to get this done if you have time guilt trip. They aren’t things we necessarily dislike. They are things we’ve entered into knowing they are worth it and they can have aspects that are fun or make us happy or both, but they also have aspects which require us to suspend our personal fulfillment in order to accomplish them.
And then there are the Get To’s. The things we want to do, that makes time disappear and fly by, that make us smile and we don’t even realize it. They are the things that bring our imagination to life, that fill us with energy instead of making us tired, that brighten our day and that of all those around us. They can be activities full of pure pleasure or something constructive or both or somewhere in between. They are the reason we do all the rest. They are the living that we’re working for. 🙂
So in each day’s dance we are winding through all three of these categories step by step. How much of this one, what needs to get done today, how can I fit in this or that so I can get to the other? It can be a hectic mess, a frantic dive for home plate, a slow plod from here to there, or an ecstatic weaving of the various ribbons around your core. Which kind of dance are you dancing today? Is it what you meant to do? Yes, no, maybe so?