Intention
As we proceed through the program Simplicity, Silence, Sabbath, let us look at the first of the five attitudes we must have to simplify our lives: intention.
Intention
Some things you remember-I was seven or eight years old when I set the course of my life in motion. I was to become a major league baseball player.
You say, 'how do you remember you were seven or eight?'
I was in the back of my father's station wagon, with two friends, probably A.T. Higle and Rusty Hoehn, and we were coming back from a game at Yankee Stadium where the hated Yankees (Giants fans were the Aschermanns) played the Boston Red Sox. I had my new 'SOX' hat on and was absolutely convinced from that day forward, nothing would stop me from one day wearing a real SOX hat and playing in that stadium. (Little did I know at the time I had bought a White Sox hat when I thought I was buying a Red Sox hat; a telling sign I would say-see below).
How you might also say could I be so sure I was only seven or eight? Because by the time I was ten there is no way in the world I would have made that hat mistake. By the time I was ten the only thing that mattered to me was baseball and I knew the difference between the Red Sox and the White Sox.
If it's possible to be intentional when you are ten years old (about something besides the hormones beginning to course through your body, I mean), then I became intentional from that day that nothing would stop me from one day signing a professional baseball contract.
That decision did guide my life too. I worked at it, unlike anything else in my life. I made decisions based on that goal. I didn't party in high school, and little in college. And I learned everything I possibly could about the game of baseball and how to play it.
Coincidentally those White Sox drafted me after my senior year in high school. I still remember sitting in the living room of the house on Croton Ave. waiting for the call. No internet then. Hell there wasn't any other way to get the message but phone. And wait I did. When the phone rang several times with calls from other people, even my parents shooed them away because we had this inkling that I would be drafted.
When the call came through I let my father answer it. When he began to smile and said "ok Steve, see you next week," I knew I had been drafted by the White Sox and that Steve Ray, the scout had called.
My intentional life had paid off. I had done it.
Now what happened after that is amusing and worth telling because as intentional as I was about heading to the minors to make my way to the majors, my mother was just as intentional that I would go to college first.
It killed my father and me. Me because I was ready to play. My father because the White Sox were going to pay for that college education if I would just sign first.
My mother was having none of it. My intention was surely trumped by my mother's intention...
Who was right? Well, just to finish the story and have some fun, the White Sox basically offered me a $22,000 bonus to sign: $8000 in cash (not a small sum in 1967) and college which cost about $3500 a year (yup, I said year not day), which meant another $14,000...$22,000 was a good bonus in those days (hell it's a good bonus today).
So I went to college, had some fun, played in the college world series, and then was drafted again after my junior year this time by the Cubs. Bonus offered? $2000...I wasn't a math major but I knew we had left some money on the table. My mother never heard the end of that one.
But why tell you this story? Because as I began to think about how I would encourage you to really see the value of intention-meaning, truly being dedicated to something-I realized I had never been more dedicated to anything in my life as I was to being a baseball player.
I've been intentional about other things for sure. Simplifying being one of them. But nothing like those years of preparing for my major league career.
Simplifying really requires intention
It wasn't until the mid 2000's when I made the decision that my crazy life needed simplifying that I faced anything requiring dedication like that baseball career. Simplifying was hard work. It required I think about absolutely everything I was doing from buying stuff to saving stuff, to simplifying relationships to making decisions about where I would live.
Making the decision to simplify was easy. Sticking with it was something else altogether.
This decision I am encouraging you to make-to simplify, find times for silence everyday and to understand just how precious time is, requires a lot of hard work.
The world is against you when you decide to do this. The world wants you to buy more stuff, take more trips, make more money, work more hours.
The world wants you to not only live in a lot of noise, but make noise yourself. Silence and solitude just aren't what this world is all about. We have the internet we have our iPods, iPads, i-everythings. You're supposed to have them with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week too. No rest! No peace!
That means if you are serious about getting your house in order, simplifying and really spending time on what matters you are going to have to do some work. You are going to have to take a look at your stuff, and your money and your relationships. You are going to have to 'see where your treasure lies for surely there is your heart.'
The work we have to do here, the work of intentionally making decisions to slow down, isn't the kind of work that too many people can help you with either. This is work you have to do yourself. You have to sit down with the yellow pad and figure out how to get stuff out of your life. You have to spend time thinking about your prayer/meditation life and how you can make more time for it. And you have to look at what we used to call the Filofax and now call the smartphone and see where the busy calendar you have can be trimmed down.
It's going to also require you to set some priorities. I remember when I had a fund raising staff the hardest thing for me to convince people of was that to spend time on a $10,000 donor that could be spent on a $100,000 wasn't a good idea. They needed to set priorities.
Same is true for us as we begin to simplify. That yellow pad first has to list what really, really, really matters to you. Everything works from there. To simplify our lives we must first know what matters the most.
And it requires us to be mindful of those things that interrupt our simplifying. Those things that get in the way of us sticking to our priorities have to be identified and confronted.
Finally simplifying and finding silence means we have to be dedicated to doing it and sticking with it. I can't tell you how many times I was blocking balls in the dirt at practice during that short baseball career when I would want to just get up and walk away. But I knew I had to learn how to block those pitches or I would never be a good catcher, so I stuck with it.
Same goes for simplifying. The temptations will be many...they have to be resisted.
Intention
Some things you remember-I was seven or eight years old when I set the course of my life in motion. I was to become a major league baseball player.
You say, 'how do you remember you were seven or eight?'
I was in the back of my father's station wagon, with two friends, probably A.T. Higle and Rusty Hoehn, and we were coming back from a game at Yankee Stadium where the hated Yankees (Giants fans were the Aschermanns) played the Boston Red Sox. I had my new 'SOX' hat on and was absolutely convinced from that day forward, nothing would stop me from one day wearing a real SOX hat and playing in that stadium. (Little did I know at the time I had bought a White Sox hat when I thought I was buying a Red Sox hat; a telling sign I would say-see below).
How you might also say could I be so sure I was only seven or eight? Because by the time I was ten there is no way in the world I would have made that hat mistake. By the time I was ten the only thing that mattered to me was baseball and I knew the difference between the Red Sox and the White Sox.
If it's possible to be intentional when you are ten years old (about something besides the hormones beginning to course through your body, I mean), then I became intentional from that day that nothing would stop me from one day signing a professional baseball contract.
That decision did guide my life too. I worked at it, unlike anything else in my life. I made decisions based on that goal. I didn't party in high school, and little in college. And I learned everything I possibly could about the game of baseball and how to play it.
Coincidentally those White Sox drafted me after my senior year in high school. I still remember sitting in the living room of the house on Croton Ave. waiting for the call. No internet then. Hell there wasn't any other way to get the message but phone. And wait I did. When the phone rang several times with calls from other people, even my parents shooed them away because we had this inkling that I would be drafted.
When the call came through I let my father answer it. When he began to smile and said "ok Steve, see you next week," I knew I had been drafted by the White Sox and that Steve Ray, the scout had called.
My intentional life had paid off. I had done it.
Now what happened after that is amusing and worth telling because as intentional as I was about heading to the minors to make my way to the majors, my mother was just as intentional that I would go to college first.
It killed my father and me. Me because I was ready to play. My father because the White Sox were going to pay for that college education if I would just sign first.
My mother was having none of it. My intention was surely trumped by my mother's intention...
Who was right? Well, just to finish the story and have some fun, the White Sox basically offered me a $22,000 bonus to sign: $8000 in cash (not a small sum in 1967) and college which cost about $3500 a year (yup, I said year not day), which meant another $14,000...$22,000 was a good bonus in those days (hell it's a good bonus today).
So I went to college, had some fun, played in the college world series, and then was drafted again after my junior year this time by the Cubs. Bonus offered? $2000...I wasn't a math major but I knew we had left some money on the table. My mother never heard the end of that one.
But why tell you this story? Because as I began to think about how I would encourage you to really see the value of intention-meaning, truly being dedicated to something-I realized I had never been more dedicated to anything in my life as I was to being a baseball player.
I've been intentional about other things for sure. Simplifying being one of them. But nothing like those years of preparing for my major league career.
Simplifying really requires intention
It wasn't until the mid 2000's when I made the decision that my crazy life needed simplifying that I faced anything requiring dedication like that baseball career. Simplifying was hard work. It required I think about absolutely everything I was doing from buying stuff to saving stuff, to simplifying relationships to making decisions about where I would live.
Making the decision to simplify was easy. Sticking with it was something else altogether.
This decision I am encouraging you to make-to simplify, find times for silence everyday and to understand just how precious time is, requires a lot of hard work.
The world is against you when you decide to do this. The world wants you to buy more stuff, take more trips, make more money, work more hours.
The world wants you to not only live in a lot of noise, but make noise yourself. Silence and solitude just aren't what this world is all about. We have the internet we have our iPods, iPads, i-everythings. You're supposed to have them with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week too. No rest! No peace!
That means if you are serious about getting your house in order, simplifying and really spending time on what matters you are going to have to do some work. You are going to have to take a look at your stuff, and your money and your relationships. You are going to have to 'see where your treasure lies for surely there is your heart.'
The work we have to do here, the work of intentionally making decisions to slow down, isn't the kind of work that too many people can help you with either. This is work you have to do yourself. You have to sit down with the yellow pad and figure out how to get stuff out of your life. You have to spend time thinking about your prayer/meditation life and how you can make more time for it. And you have to look at what we used to call the Filofax and now call the smartphone and see where the busy calendar you have can be trimmed down.
It's going to also require you to set some priorities. I remember when I had a fund raising staff the hardest thing for me to convince people of was that to spend time on a $10,000 donor that could be spent on a $100,000 wasn't a good idea. They needed to set priorities.
Same is true for us as we begin to simplify. That yellow pad first has to list what really, really, really matters to you. Everything works from there. To simplify our lives we must first know what matters the most.
And it requires us to be mindful of those things that interrupt our simplifying. Those things that get in the way of us sticking to our priorities have to be identified and confronted.
Finally simplifying and finding silence means we have to be dedicated to doing it and sticking with it. I can't tell you how many times I was blocking balls in the dirt at practice during that short baseball career when I would want to just get up and walk away. But I knew I had to learn how to block those pitches or I would never be a good catcher, so I stuck with it.
Same goes for simplifying. The temptations will be many...they have to be resisted.
Being intentional about this process of Simplicity, Silence and Sabbath sounds easy and sounds like a given. It isn't and it's why I put it here first. If you are going to do this? Get ready... the world doesn't want you to succeed.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Next we'll look at a system for being focused in our work to simplify. We'll examine the Buddhist concept of mindfulness that lets us concentrate on the here and now rather than regretting the past and trying to figure out what's going to happen in the future. And we'll see that being mindful can make our life simpler, quieter and more fulfilling.
Comments
Post a Comment