So often I hear or read the expression, "If it matters to you, you'll make time for it." People who say this mean the things we care about most should be the ones that take first priority in our lives and schedules. The savviest planners among us may appear to make every item fit, regardless its relative importance. Of course that is an illusion. What the outside observer does not see in this neat schedule is the process of pruning the planner had to employ to get there.
So yes, the concept of "making time" is clear enough. Yet the casual tossing of the saying makes me inwardly squirm. There's something humiliating there. Who is this person, I think to myself, to judge such a thing? That I don't have time to do something does not equate to my believing it unworthy of being done. "If it matters to you" carries with it the underlying assumption that, indeed, it must not matter to me. And under that is the further implication that it ought to.
Unlike commodities that are renewable, time is frustratingly limited. Regardless how much something matters, we can't manufacture an additional week or day or even hour. We have to be selective in which activities get a cut. If we're wise--and perhaps just a little lucky--we make those choices carefully enough to have few regrets later.
But the bald truth is that, in an attempt to "make" more time, what we too often do instead is rob ourselves of critical elements of well-being. Acknowledging our needs means alloting a regular portion of every day to sleep, nourishment, hygiene, and recreation. Yet many of us guilt ourselves into sacrificing those things in favor of freeing time for something else, usually work. Very few are innocent of this self-torture. How many people do you know who have never skipped lunch in favor of meeting a deadline? Never stayed up too late finishing a project that could have waited until morning? Never spent an hour or two attending a seminar or workshop that, in the end, really didn't deliver the enlightenment it promised? That kind of "created" time, on closer examination, is actually wasted time. And it can't be recaptured.
For many of us, the fall-winter holidays are packed with family and religious events that are close to our hearts. But the preparations can be overwhelming. Making time for the minutiae that turn these occasions into chores shouldn't be part of the agenda. Why not ease the frantic pace, just for the next month or two, and refocus our time on what's really important to us--the people and ideals behind the details.
And let's not feel guilty for that: there's a vast difference between avoiding responsibilities and balancing them with our human needs. Declining to "make time" and instead enjoying life once in a while is not shirking--it's healthy.
© 2007 by AnnaLisa Michalski