Is it just me, or did December pass in a blur? I blinked and it was 2019. I feel like I need to do a better job of holding onto all of the little moments and cherishing this time with my family and friends. I think I need to calendar more downtime. Time to just play games with the kids, or to sit and read a book or take a bath. Maybe it’s because it gets dark so early that I feel like the days come and go so quickly. I don’t know. But what I do know is that here we are, another year into this beautiful life.
This morning, another doctor was operating with Dr. Cap and told him that he was at the airport at 5am dropping off his daughter to spend a year in South America doing volunteer work. She is taking some time between high school and college. Even hearing the story of waving goodbye at the airport secondhand made me tear up. This doctor said, you better hold onto this time, because you blink and they are gone. I realized that we only have 8 more birthdays with our oldest before she goes off to college. EIGHT. That’s it.
How can we slow down time when life seems to be moving so fast. Can we take more walks, schedule less events, take time to make and enjoy a meal together? What I miss most about spending time in Greece, is that life in the village is slow. People sit down for coffee with friends and family for hours. We would walk to the little town square and have a coffee and just sit and connect. People don’t do that here. Why not? I think it’s because everyone is so busy clamoring to be at the top. To be better, to be fitter, to be more successful, to get your kids in all the right preschools, all the important after school activities. Perhaps we have lost sight of what true success is.
This year, I want to redefine success. I want success to be more quality time spent really listening to my kids (not while scrolling through e-mail or social media – I totally catch myself doing that when they are telling me about their day, and it’s so rude), I want to spend more time PLAYING with them, reading to them, getting into their world and loving it, more time BEING in the moment rather than trying to take the perfect picture of the moment. I want success to be making the moments last so that when we find ourselves at the first Monday in January, we don’t think… wow, where did 2019 go?
How to Slow Down When Life Moves So Fast
