Are We All REALLY That Busy?

Balance. Yeah, life is all about balance. But there can be too much that you have to balance, too. Have you ever just played with a set of balancing scales? When you put something on one side, that side goes down, then you can balance it out by putting something on the other side and all is good. But like our lives, when you keep stacking stuff on the scale plates, it may balance, but inevitably, something will spill off and then you are unbalanced. And like most good Americans, we don't say, "oh, hey, maybe I've got too much on my plate," no, we just keep re-stacking and pretending to balance our lives out with too much until it all falls off. By then, the damage has been done.

You with me?

My Dad called me lazy once (maybe more than once), and I disagreed. I will work. I will do whatever I need to and I will try to do it to the best of my ability. I will even see what needs to be done beyond my assigned task. But I see no need to take on more than I absolutely need to. Does that make me lazy?

Let me go further in explanation. I had an aunt and cousin killed in a horrible car accident several years ago. My cousin Jan was mother to three young children. Her sister would come to her house once a week to help her clean because Jan didn't keep up with it all the time. I was told that Jan would be doing something in the house and when one of her kids asked her to play, she would stop and sit down to play. So one could argue that Jan didn't balance her scale, but she did have help come in every week to balance that scale. In Jan's story, my opinion is her scale was balanced because now those children do not have their mother but they do have the memory of her spending time with them.

Close to three years ago I backed out of a lot of "things" I was involved with. My pregnancy with Hadyn was hard and then after having her, I just wanted to spend time with my kids. I didn't have the devoted time with Hunter when he was little that I have with Hadyn since I was working full time then. But now I have both kids at home and as trying as it may be at times (lots of times HA!), I wouldn't trade it for anything right now.

I clean my house, do laundry, grocery shop, cook, home-school, but I try to make time for play. Most of the time, our play is just silly fun, not organized game play, but man, we have fun. Sometimes we just sit and relax watching some tube. I realized one day that one thing I don't do is call up girlfriends and chit chat - I'd love to hear some Mommy voices regularly - but when I really thought about it, mostly it's because all I hear from other moms are how busy they are. Kids are involved in every thing possible, and the moms are rushing from one appointment to another every day and just don't have time to sit and visit.

Now my question is, are you really that busy or do you feel like you have to say that because if you're not, then you, too, must be lazy? Both things are unbalancing the scale. If you are that busy, you're scales are either so unbalanced or so overloaded that it's unhealthy. If you aren't that busy, but feel that you must say so, that's not healthy either.

So, I'm not that busy. Obviously, I have time to blog and Facebook. I play with my kids most of the day. I challenge the rest of you to stop and sit for a little while and not feel guilty about it.

Can you do it?