Posted on 01 Sep, 2011 -
Sweet peas and fish finger sandwiches
Today marks a new school year. A full 12 months ahead of us to get it ‘right’ and do well
Or would I be better off just sitting in the allotment and enjoying the fruits of this year’s efforts - before I start putting all my hopes into next year’s goals and ambitions?
Dear Reader,
These days, the 1st of September has become more like the start of the New Year for me than the 1st January. With two children at school it feels like the beginning of a whole new year in which they can achieve and do well. It’s also the time of year when I put a bit of pressure on myself and think about what I can achieve this school year.
It is at this time of the year when I get that wonderful feeling of having a full 12 months ahead of me to ‘get things right’, to succeed at what we’re aiming for and to enjoy the best and happiest of life in the process.
There is also that feeling of being able to start a new. To turn over a new leaf. Of having another chance.
High hopes for the future. But what about the small things?
Now, while this all may sound rather positive and exciting and full of promise, it also struck me today that there are a couple of things wrong with this outlook that I have.
First of all, the kind of goals and plans I’m focusing on are really only about the big things. For the kids it’s about their school work, piano exams or reading ability. For myself it’s about the next book I’m going to write, the desire to find a new career… or crazy pipe dreams about emigrating abroad or taking holidays in apartments in San Francisco that I’ll never be able to afford.
But as we all know, it’s also all the small and less immediately obvious things in life that make it more contented and worth living. Should I be thinking more, perhaps, about things like making my children’s teatime more exciting - or ensuring they have enough children round to play so that they can foster good friendships? Should my own goals be more about things like getting out on my bike more or spending more time making homemade breads and chutney?
And what about acknowledging the things in our lives that are already going well?
The second thing that is wrong with my new school year vision is that by saying to myself that this is another chance to do more or to do things better, I am effectively saying to myself that what I’ve done or achieved or the way I’ve lived in the previous year has not been enough. Or good enough. Or quite up to scratch.
Would I be better off, in fact, if I used up all that excited life-planning energy to look back over the previous year and congratulate myself on what I’ve already been doing right - and need to keep on trucking on with.
One of my greatest pleasures recently, for example, has come from the sight of the mass of sweet peas growing in my allotment and the abundance of a wonderful purple climbing beans that belatedly came to fruit while I was on holiday.
Surely the act of loving and feeding my children every day deserves a little recognition. These may not be ‘great’ achievements but they are what make us all human and they are the daily acts that make our lives work.
While dreams and ambitions and goals are good, the only place that life really happens is in the present moment today. If I set my sights too far and focus on what may happen over the coming year, maybe I am missing the opportunity to enjoy what is happening and what I am doing already.
A healthy balance between the pleasures of today and our ambitions for tomorrow
Of course, we must aim in life to be everything we can be…
“If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be unhappy. You’ll be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities.”
Abraham Maslow
“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Being our best, however, is as much about our small achievements as our big ones. Is it as much about the attitude with which we set forth every morning and the ways in which we engage with the world as the things that we ‘achieve’.
It is about what we have added to the lives of those around us. The joys we have taken from the abundance of life. And the pleasure we have taken in the process.
So… more bike rides and sweet peas. Oh, and perhaps a new book as well…
Best wishes
