Just Sit There

I had two appointments last Thursday, one at 10 and the second after noon. Planning ahead for the 10 o’clock I was ready to leave at 9, since I would be heading on Rte. 2 towards Boston.  Usually this trip takes 35-40 minutes but I am a veteran of Rte. 2 and have learned that rush hour lasts until at least 9:30. Before I left, I checked my date book to make sure of the time and discovered that I had mixed up the appointments. It was my afternoon appointment that would take me on Rte. 2  and my 10 o’clock was local, a scant 5-10 minutes away. An unexpected 50 minutes opened up.  Immediately, I went down my mental to-do list and realized that I could fit in at least two errands before 10: Trader Joe’s and maybe one other on the way back. I told my husband that’s what I would do since I had all this extra time. He, very wisely, observed, “Polly, why don’t you just sit and relax? ” I heard my own words coming right back at me. Over the forty years of our marriage I had used those words, or some very like them, to get him to slow down, take a break.

It is so easy to give someone else advice and forget to give myself the same thing.  I had a good forty-five minutes at my disposal, with lots of good choices.  I could read, meditate, pray, do some yoga, or simply breathe and be still. And then the old tape started playing:  “Get something done.” Yet, how is buying supplies at Trader Joe’s more worthwhile  than taking time to practice yoga or spend moments in prayer? Whatever I purchased at the market would be gone in less than a week anyway, while prayer time, reading or just deep breathing can sow seeds of ongoing insight and healthy practice.  We have been acculturated to believe that sitting in silence for half an hour is just wasting time.  But time is not ours to waste.  Time just is. It can be used any way we choose moment to moment. It can’t be discarded. It’s not possible to waste it.

A wise soul once said, “Don’t just do something, sit there!”  So I did. I read some more poems in my kitchen table devotional and chatted with my husband for a while.  Then I went out and bought some flowers.

   “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”       Robert Louis Stevenson