If You Can't ..

Back in the day...I remember sitting in the sorority house listening and singing along to, "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with."


A few months ago in one of my courses the instructor, a psychologist by trade, told us to take out a blank piece of paper and draw two large, non-intersecting circles on the page. The first circle/pie represents how you spend your time right now, separate it into segments showing the ways you spend your time. (All the pieces of pie that make up your day.) In the second circle draw the segments the way you would like your day/pie to look. Does my description of how to do the exercise make sense? I hope so. It's a graphic way of literally seeing how you spend your time.

So if you, spending your precious time right now reading this blog, did these circles, how similar would your two circles be?

I had something of a revelation in those few minutes. I think many people had very dissimilar circles. I did not. Surprise! While my life isn't exactly as I had imagined it would be and I have unrealized dreams and goals and stuff, I spend much of my time doing things I want to be doing.

Okay, to be honest, I do not love scrubbing floors and toilets but that's a tiny non-issue sliver. Truth be told, in the grand scheme of my life, that sliver is insignificant enough to be microscopic.

Life is short and precious and unpredictable. While we all have responsibilities and obligations, we have a choice how we respond to the responsibilities. I can choose how I spend each day and how to enjoy my day. I cannot go shopping in Paris, but I can read a book I love. I cannot spend the day at the beach but I can knit those socks so warm and cozy.

As a stay at home mom/student I could find lots of things with which to busy myself and some of them might be productive and purposeful and some of them may or may not be enjoyable. If my whole pie was filled with those "To-Do list" tasks at the expense of nurturing who I am as a person, I would have a pretty bitter pie.

I have chosen to fill my pie with things I love and to frame the less-enjoyable bites in a tasty crust of love. You see, even though I'm not a fan of changing diapers or wiping noses, I am serving and raising some pretty wonderful little people who depend on me.

All this to say, if your pie isn't filled with things you love, maybe find a way to love them, wrap them up in a tasty crust of new perspective or change it up a bit and add some tasty extras to your pie.

You've got one incredible, miraculous life. You can use your ingredients to make a great pie. Sometimes you might have to get creative and sometimes it might not be exactly how you imagined it, but you can love it because it's yours to experience fully.

If you can't live a life of supermodels and glossy magazines, love the life of your reality. Just try it. Don't do it for me, do it for you. Pretty please. :)

-Peace