That whatever you do or choose, you are opening yourself up to criticism by others or more importantly from yourself.
That's because in life every moment is a choice and each selection of what you do with your time and efforts means by definition that you are not doing something else important then.
- Take the mother or father who chooses to spend time raising their children, but then are not focused as much on their career.
- Take the student who is working really hard on getting those good grades and SAT scores, but then are not doing as much or well with extracurricular activities like sports or socializing.
- Take the spiritual or religious person or clergy who chooses to focuses their life studying and performing holy speech and deeds but not so much other earthly and material matters.
- Take the athlete who works out and eats right focusing on toning and honing their body and physical skills but doesn't spend as much time and effort on intellectual interests or more standard career pursuits.
- Take the extrovert who focuses on building and maintaining relationships and networks--family, friends, community, colleagues, others--but are not putting the same time and attention to enhancing their other knowledge, skills, and abilities.
So you say, but why can't we just do everything we're supposed to do, and simply balance?
Well, that is what we all try to do in our own way, but still each time and every moment you are doing one thing, you are not at that moment doing something else or being somewhere else.
So that causes tension, perhaps a tug-of-war within ourselves, stress, and even guilt.
The impact is that we often run from one thing to another or we get distracted in what we are doing--"Honey can you answer the phone?"
Some classic examples are when we race home from the office to pick the kids up from school or while playing with sweet little Johny or Suzie, the phone rings and and we have to pick up that call from the boss at work.
As they say, you can't be--physically or mentally--in two places at the same time!
Hence, now the movement for mindfulness, being in the moment and focused.
But as the demands in life forever ask more of us--even amidst ever greater technology and automation to assist us--somehow we can never do enough because of course, the bar gets raised for ourselves and the competition gets tougher from those who make choices to focus on specific areas that we are not as much.
So say that you are splitting your time between work and family, but someone else is single or doesn't have kids and they are full in with work, staying late, going in weekends, getting those extra credentials, and just putting in every extra effort there...well, how do you think you will stack up?
Yes, some of us recognize the importance of work-life balance and even focusing incrementally across the many important areas of our life: physically, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and socially.
Never-the-less every moment, in a time- and space-bound world, we are forced to choose this or that.
There is no one right answer for everyone!
And every choice in every moment is the opportunity for you to criticize yourself or for others to criticize you that you weren't paying attention, focused, doing your best, etc.
But who cares--it's our life to live and we can live it as we want?
True, however as inevitably important things or relationships break down or fail, have mistakes or errors, or aren't going as we would ultimately want or dream they should--we ask ourselves, could we have done things differently or somehow managed our time, efforts, and focus better.
(Source Photo: Online Advertisement provided by Dannielle Blumenthal)
