A life less ordinary

I saw a bit of the Hurricane Katrina on tv tonight. It's pretty crazy. And very sad. There was a special about tiny premature babies, some only days old, and the doctors and nurses who stayed in the hospital to save their lives. Their incubators, etc. are running on generators, and if the generators runs out someone will have to sit and manually turn a crank to keep the machine going (at least the one type of machine I saw). Those are the people I never really stop and think about when I see evacuations and natural disasters in the news.

Then there are the people looting and stealing plasma televisions...

I saw three cars piled up on top of each other, all completely wrecked. And it made me think about the power that natural forces have over the earth. I thought of that car on top of the pile (it looked like a BMW). How many hours did the people who owned that car work and work and work to pay that car off? Think for a second. That car would be at least $50,000. That's WELL over Marc's and my combined annual income (when I'm working), and that $50,000 of course would not include the considerable amount of interest paid with monthly payments. A car like that would cost Marc and I a year, year and a half of work. Every hour of every day spent to pay off that car. And as Kevin Spacey says at the end of Usual Suspects, "and like that... he's gone." One extremely heavy wind and within a few seconds that year and a half of work is a pile of rubble in the street -- completely worthless. And that's just one car.

Now I tend to be an overly (well, excessively, really) reflective person. So I'm constantly thinking of what I am doing, should be doing, wish I was doing, etc. Sometimes, though rarely, these things all correlate. Most of the time, however, I end up doing things I am doing, while wishing I was doing the things I should be doing. Things that have meaning. Things that are lasting. Things that are outside of myself.

It seems to me like we spend our time making our own little life for ourselves. Like me spending my days with my kids (albeit playing with them and teaching them) and cleaning the house. Finding a place for all of our things. Moving this to there and that to here. Trying to get rid of as much as possible -- because we really don't need so many things!!-- but still ending up in a house with too much. Giving things away. Buying a few things to make the pared down rooms just a bit cozy and cohesive. Organizing the kids clothes. Giving their clothes away. And then there's just the everyday maintenance of the necessities: washing the dishes, doing the laundry, making the food, etc.

Now some of these things really need to be done. (We do need to eat, after all.) But some of it seems like such a waste of time. What does having a very nice serene bathroom really do for me anyway? Or a nicely organized closet? Honestly, sometimes I feel like I'm so shallow for spending my days doing this. How much of what we spend our time and money actually has any sort of value whatsoever?

Marc and I are constantly trying to create for ourselves the daily life that we really want -- where we're disciplined and balanced and are able to do a good portion of the things that we feel are important. We spend a lot of time with our kids: reading to them, singing and dancing with them, playing games, being goofy and childish (oh ya, and some yelling and mild threats of corporal punishment too). We've also started spending a lot more time reading and reflecting, listening to good music, calming ourselves so we can get a better idea of what we should be doing. But then here again I have the problem of what does sitting at home in my cozy red living room, listening to Chopin and reading Brian McLaren really do for anybody?

Over the past several years I've come to realize that we need balance in life. We need time to work and rest. Time to nurture our physical bodies and time to pursue intellectual endeavours (this from the girl who convinced my high school principal that I did not need to take the required Phys. Ed. class in high school because "I'm here to learn, not waste my time running around for an hour" -- and now I have the thighs and hips to prove it!!). We need time to look after ourselves so that we can look after others. So, ya, I know that there is value in the reading and the relaxing, but I think we tend to spend too much of our time doing that.

Then I start thinking about how we have only so many hours in the day, days in the week, etc. Where can I make time for the things that help others? It comes down to logistics. I just need to pick an evening, get a sitter, and get out there. Or pick a time, open my home, and get people in here. I know that I have to just do it, and stop "should"ing all over the place. Then I will know that I have not spent the hours of my life in vain. That they will be worth more than some BMW in a heap on the side of the road. Somehow they will have the worth of that little 3 pound baby hooked up to monitors in the NICU. Because I will have touched people. And not just people. But people outside of my sphere. People that make me see beyond myself, and who, in turn, help me understand who "myself" really is.