Lesson #10932: Love more, Do less.

It is September already.  Somehow, we survived the summer.  11 weeks of cramming, racing, barreling through -- the result of me being in school full-time while Nova was out for the summer -- nearly did me in.  Thank goodness for Moms, and Tonys, and Aunties, without whom I could not have succeeded. One summer down, one more to go.

It’s taken me the entire past month to decompress, to find a new calm.  But just this week I caught myself singing a tune in the car on the way to class, tapping to the beat while waiting for the light to change.  It’s amazing how these little things can bring joy in the most mundane of moments. I delighted at my ability to sing again, to feel music in my body, to feel joy without cause.  

This in stark contrast to the hyper-focused, muscles-clenched, don’t-let-things-fall-apart mentality that I adopted to survive the summer.  It wasn’t by choice (necessarily), but it was my default. I kept dreaming of ways to do things differently, to be differently, but my patterns got the best of me.  Do, Achieve, Work, Stress, Push, Worry, Repeat.

I let relationships fall to the wayside.  I abandoned self-care.  My need to get every little thing just right, to have all the pieces securely locked into place, to outperform, to prove something, to achieve competence, and to also be loved by my daughter -- meant that there was nothing left for me, or anyone else.  About halfway through, I felt rather lonely. I wasn’t the person I wanted to be, and this affected my ability to authentically connect with the people I love. I was running a rat race that I had created, and I was running it alone.

Sitting here, on the other side, in a quiet house with my thoughts and a laptop, I ask:  
Why do we do this?  Where is the joy in pushing ourselves to the limit?  Why are we constantly competing, even when nobody’s watching?

Here is what I know:  When I die, I will not care about the accolades, or who I was able to impress, or even how successful my ventures were.  I will care about the people I loved, whether I loved them well enough, whether they knew it, and felt it. I will not care about how hard I worked but rather what and whom I worked hard for, that it was meaningful, and resonant.  I will wish that I hadn’t depleted myself as many times as I did, to achieve a false sense of security.  And I will be incredibly grateful to those who stood by me while I learned this lesson, perhaps more than once, because they are the only reason I care about this life after all.  Our people are everything.

Life is a constant barrage of trials and errors.  We will not do many things right, but we can use the gift of hindsight to do it better next time.  Never perfect -- just better.
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