Busy Doing Nothing...

"We're busy doing nothing, working the whole day through ..."

Those opening song lines are ringing in my mind right now as we are trying to adapt to our new lifestyle here. We are busy pretty much every day from the moment we wake up until we finish supper and head off to bed in the early evening .... but what are we so busy with? Work, chores, jobs, having fun?? Well it's all of that - but I'm realizing that I need to do a rethink and redefine things because certain words seem to have certain connotations and perhaps some of this confusion is what has lead us in the past to a lack of satisfaction in our normal rat race lives.

Your 'work' or your 'job' seems to have more prestige in our society as it can be quantified according to how much money you make from it. This attitude relegates other work, that you don't get paid for, such as household chores, to a lesser status, and in turn we tend to feel less value and less satisfaction when we do these 'chores'.

Once we appreciate all the work we do and don't define it's importance by how much money we made from it there seems to be a lot more general satisfaction. Now that we have no income it is easier to realize this distinction. At first I was considering jobs like: mending roof tiles, plastering walls, etc. "work" (as they could be quantified by how much we would have had to pay someone else to do them), and jobs like hand-washing, cooking, cleaning, etc. "chores". Somehow the former seemed to have more value. But the truth is that sometimes the things that really need to get done are the more mundane things - but that's no reason to undervalue ourselves.

For example: with these new thoughts in mind I am really enjoying cooking and trying out new ways with food - in the past getting a meal on the table at the end of a day's "work" most definitely felt like a thankless chore. I've even started making my own bread and cakes - something I never used to enjoy!

Similarly with school-work. Getting Lielle in the past to do her homework could definitely be classified as a 'chore' - something to get over and done with as soon as possible; but now we are homeschooling her, spending several hours each day learning together or in one-on-one study we are appreciating what a delight it is and just what great value it has for all of us.

It's surprisingly not so easy just to let go of our old ways and to appreciate the time we now have available to relish in each and every task - appreciating ourselves and each other more in the process.... but it is happening, slowly and I think we are all very thankful for the opportunity we have now to learn this.