Recently at work I have been going through a lot (hours and
hours worth) of paperwork, checking and confirming monotonous details that only
require a few brain cells.
To ward off the monotony, I have been listening to a lot of
Ted Talks. If you’ve never listed to any, you should without doubt check them
out!
I found myself naturally gravitating towards Ted Talks that
focused on minimizing the “stuff” that you have in your house, home, and life
in general. Maybe that’s because I’m leaving for Hawaii soon and theoretically
am going to try to fit everything I’ll need in the next six months into one
backpack and one suitcase, but lately I have been thinking of how life would
potentially be different if the only stuff I cared about having was the stuff
that I actually needed. How much less bogged down would my life become?
Then it struck me.
I am free.
I am free to dream and create plans based on those dreams
for a bright future, or I am free to choose to go through whatever door is most
conveniently opened to me, wasting my free time watching TV and surfing the
internet searching for more things that I don’t need.
I am free to squeeze every drop of potential out the life
given to me, or I am free to squander it like it’s nothing.
Sometimes life can look so much like a
script we all of the sudden realize that we were forced into reading—first is
the scene where we go to school, then comes the scene where we go to college,
then comes a job, a mortgage, a marriage, a child.
None of those things are bad. In fact, some of those are
things that I dream about… someday owning my own house, getting married,
becoming a mother—those are dreams that are close to my heart, and there is
nothing wrong with that. In fact, those are dreams that I’m proud of.
But in the here and now I am not married. I do not own a
house. I do not have kids. And right now I feel inspired to take advantage of
these days of freedom while they last, because I know that when my future
dreams of marriage and motherhood come true, I will look back on my days of
complete and total independence and freedom with longing.
I don’t want to waste my days, and at the same time I don’t
want to be kept in a prison of my own plans.
As I think about intentional living, I am so glad that I’ve
chosen to do a YWAM DTS. It was hard to decide to deviate from the route that I
thought I would be travelling my life by after I graduated college, but I think
it’s such a good choice for me. It may even have been the first catalyst for
all the thoughts I’ve been having about how I really want to spend my 20’s. It
has reminded me of the sense of responsibility I have for my own life.
My life was a gift to me. I am my soul’s steward, and I am
one hundred percent responsible for my life and my time. If someday I look back
on my 20’s and am disappointed in the way that I allowed these days to slip
through my fingers, it will be on me. My responsibility. My waste. My regret.
And I choose not to allow myself to do that.
Now I’m just left with the questions that follow that choice:
What now? What do I want? What do I do once I figure out what I want? How am I
going to think this through, and how am I going to put my plans into action?
My answer now is that I don’t know. But I will think it though, write about it,
formulate a plan, and then put that plan into action.
This is a vulnerable post for me. I don’t usually just
scribble out what’s in my head and throw it onto my blog, but this time I am.
Maybe as a way to hold myself accountable to the way I choose to spend my days.
Rest assured that there will be more to come on this. I hope
to have many conversations about how to live intentionally, and to think long
and hard about what I want.
The definition of squander is to waste something (especially money or time) in a reckless and foolish manner or to allow (an opportunity) to pass or be lost.
And I choose not to let that happen.
