I have one main goal in life: to live a happy, healthy, balanced life.
But there’s one truth I’ve learned just this week about pursuing that goal: Just when I’ve got it all figured out, something changes and I have to pursue my goal all over again.
I like to think that I have my priorities pretty well straightened out. There are the obvious ones about my family, my faith, and my friends. But then there are the smaller ones that involve day-to-day or week-to-week responsibilities–things like deciding when to work, when to clean the bathroom, when to drop what I’m doing to spend time with my husband versus when I need to buckle down and get some work done, when to take time for myself, or when to be spontaneous and do something fun to unwind. Just last week I found myself very satisfied with how my life was going. I’m happy with who I am, and I found myself enjoying life–finally. That only lasted for a couple of days at most, because suddenly my usual routines and set of priorities were no longer keeping me balanced. My husband needed some extra attention and love from me for his own well-being. Extended family came into town to visit. Holidays and time off from work were abundant with my nearby family. My son stopped taking his afternoon naps. It seemed like my battle to find that happy, healthy, and balanced life was futile.
Then, I realized I’d been looking at life all wrong.
Life isn’t the same for all 80+ years that we live. We grow, we change, we learn and develop, and our circumstances are always adjusting. Life is not a stagnant thing. Our needs and priorities will change as we continue living. If we embrace that fact and make it a life-long goal to continually pursue a balanced life, it will happen. And we’ll have more satisfaction in life. However, if we reject change and simply assume that our goals and priorities should be static for years and years, there will be no balance or joy. It’s like we each have an unseen list of needs and priorities that we’re trying to achieve, and as soon as we accomplish them, the list changes. So we can either keep the list that we finally figured out and try to bend it to fit the new one, or we can look at the new list and work to change our current one into it.
It’s a good thing that I love to swim. Life is not a still lake of idle water. It is a fluid river, rising when it rains and turning into a gentle trickle when it droughts. But it is always moving and changing. We can either jump in and swim, or we can sit on the bank, pretending it’s a lake that goes nowhere.
I hope you enjoy swimming as much as I do.