Chores and Life's Destiny

I have always had a problem with the things that I am supposed to do.

I would guess (if you asked me) that this comes from a time and place where I somehow believed that I was something special and that I was destined to do great things.  Real life intervenes, of course:  one sometimes has to take the job one has to take, and then comes items and marriage and children, etc.  Suddenly those things that you were "destined" to do have been replaced by a series of things that need your attention.

You fight this, of course, find reasons for it not to be so.  You start begrudging your responsibilities your time, especially if they keep you away from the important stuff.  You find ways to minimize the time and energy you have to spend on such things, always looking for a little bit more of "your time".  Even the things that really should matter in your life become less important as they are overrun by the vision in your mind of the things you are supposed to be doing.

And then something happens.

The car breaks down.  Your fence falls over.  A pet falls sick.  And suddenly you realize that all the things you should have been paying attention to, those hours of maintenance and the dreaded "chores", have come back to haunt you.  Because while you were off trying to re-demonstrate to yourself how important the things you were destined to work were, the inevitability of life happened.

It is a change of mind to get back there, the sort of change of mind that once upon a time you remember being taught as a child:  chores first, then fun.  The problem is that you got the idea of chores mixed up with a life destiny - when in fact most of us do not have the overriding life destiny that we think we do other than the simple act of living ethically and responsibly in a world that desperately needs the example.

The solution, thankfully, is not as hard as it might seem even if it as boring as it sounds:  chores first, then fun.

Sure, it might not sound as exciting or even as interesting as doing that life's destiny that you thought you had - and it might even mean you do not do most of the things you thought were destined to do on a regular basis.  But it does do at least one thing: it allows you to sleep at night knowing the important things, the things you are responsible for, did not go undone.

And that may allow you to sleep best of all.