I sat on the floor last Monday morning, dressed in jammies, coffee in hand, playing blocks with my daughter. It was one of those peaceful moments, lasting two minutes on average. In those two minutes, I wondered for the first time, what will this all look like in five years, when she is five and I am forty?
It was the first time I started connecting today’s actions to tomorrow’s results. I let my mind move to ten years out, then fifteen – when she’ll be fifteen and I, fifty.
Last year’s survival-mode-lifestyle didn’t provide me the calm and rested mind to think of life & life’s choices in this way. I let myself muse on what it would look like to stay at home more? Would I really *lose* so much in five years? Would forty be too old to work again?
It all seemed silly. Of course not.
One mom’s article of fully regretting her decision to stay at home (after she already had) highlighted a huge error we make, all or nothing. We simply surrender to the decision – work or not – as though there is nothing in between. This mom bemoaned her losing touch with technology, her work, herself. (Though with her article published seems like she’s got her groove back.)
Our debates focus on “this or that” – not on how to create the results we want to achieve & what actions will get us there. I thought of myself at fifty and was astonished by how clear my vision was for I want our family to be living.
There’s no right answer, no direct path, and that’s part of the fun. We get to create it. I think if we focused on the “how” we want to live, we’d be less likely to get stuck in the rigid notions of “it’s this way or that way.”
Choosing to sit and play blocks or Barbies for five, ten, or fifteen years does not mean I automatically surrender it all. A Japanese proverb says it well:
Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
I do not intend to write a blog in fifteen years on why I regretted my decisions.