I am not sure it’s possible to waste time. It is possible to spend time, and waste is always a judgement relative to some standard or expectation of what we should be doing with our time.
We can use time to do things that we judge as having maximum or high value. When we are really up against a deadline and there is more to do than we think can be done in the time allotted, we can even somehow create time.
Yet, there are many times when I just don’t feel like doing whatever it is I think I
By Shae Hadden
Bio
I
am reminded, once again, that we cannot ‘give our best’ day in and day
out unless we also give to ourselves. And sometimes the best we gift we
can offer ourselves is a new perspective on time. For the point of view
I have held until now (that time is a precious resource that I don’t
have enough of), has left me drained and unsatisfied. I wonder what
happened to unprogrammed time to relax and smell the roses, to be in
the company
As the evenings get cooler and days shorter here, summer holidays wind down. Everyone seems to be preparing for the start of September, and looking forward to the last real weekend before things start up again. Most everyone I talk with has enjoyed some of the summer outside with family and friends, and I find myself experiencing a twinge of regret. For me, the last few months have been a blur of work indoors in front of the computer, interspersed with a few brief moments of relaxation. This afternoon,
It’s almost springtime in Brazil. I was walking around in a t-shirt two days ago and almost froze to death this evening. The weather is one of the things I can count on to be unpredictable everywhere I go. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending upon your point of view), I don’t get outside much—mostly I am working inside with groups of people. Today I had two meetings with two groups and was struck by how similar conversations seem to be in this world of global business. Everyone seems
Either/or.
This way of thinking about and relating to life is one of the most persistent and difficult aspects of our culture. Everything is either this or that. And if it isn’t this, it must be that.
We are either independent or dependent.
We are either the part or the whole.
We can be unified and whole or we can be fragmented and incomplete.
If something isn’t true, it must be false.
If something isn’t wrong, then it is right.
And on it goes….
This either/or mode of observing and
A friend of mine sent me a site about conscious aging. It sounds like we’re on the same page, but thought I would take a minute to clarify what comes to mind when I hear that term. First of all, it is a term that to me seems to be synonymous with ‘conscious living’, since everyone is aging all the time. In this case, it is obvious that the term refers to ‘getting older consciously’ that further suggests that the alternative is to grow older ‘unconsciously’.
It makes we think about
I am in the process of reorganizing my photographs. One of the most enjoyable fruits of the technological tree in my opinion has been the digital camera and all the cool software that has been developed for playing with our pics. I have been into the shooting of digital pictures for four and have even bought one of the fancy Nikon SLR models. Unfortunately, it is too complicated and not at all intuitive, so until I have time to take some lessons, it patiently waits for me to play with it. In the
By Shae Hadden
Bio
Today, two of my cousins asked for my
perspective on something that happened to them recently. They each,
obviously, had opposing perspectives on what had occurred and wanted me
to objectively give my opinion. Their story goes something like this…
A
young woman of Chinese descent, an engineer by trade, is living in our
city, working here temporarily. She has no friends or relatives here
and has been attending a downtown church in an effort to meet people.
One of the things we need to learn if we haven’t learned it by the time we reach retirement and our ‘golden years’ is how to deal with loss. Aside from the obvious loss of friends and family though death and incapacitating illness, we have a host of other things we can ‘lose’, such as systems of support, material possessions, our physical abilities and perhaps most importantly—possibility. Not everyone experiences loss and certainly not in the same way. But loss, whether real or perceived,
By Shae Hadden
Bio
“The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible and achieve it, generation after generation.”
—Pearl S. Buck
When I was younger, I used to believe in setting goals that were feasible, practical, reasonable and possible. Now, in middle age, I find myself wanting to throw aside the limited scope of the goals I inherited from my parents, peers, and society. Rather than save up or mete out my resources to last into a distant future, I’d