This morning I handed in my resignation without any firm plans of where I’ll be off to next… except to take seven weeks off to spend it with my wife and daughter, my parents who are coming up from Australia in mid-August, and the second child we’re due with on September 6th.
One of the suppliers I regularly deal with said it was admirable that I would take off so much time, when people today are so focused on money, money, money. But I told her that in the last
12 years I have taken almost three years off work to travel and experience life.
Balance in life is a bit like communism… it’s good on paper, but somehow it doesn’t work in the real world. I’ve tried throughout my whole life to attain a kind of balance, and the best I’ve managed is three years off in twelve. But what’s more important is to attain happiness. If you’re happy at work and happy at home then the need for balance takes care of itself. The need for balance arises when we’re unhappy and are constantly seeking relief somewhere else.
I always find it sad when people spend months and months looking forward to a week-long holiday. It’s one thing to be excited for a holiday, but it’s another to wish away the majority of your life for a couple of weeks a year. What about the rest of the time?
When I think of life I think of a dripping tap. It drips and drips a little bit at a time. Each drop could represent a day. Individually a drop is not significant, but collect many drops over time and you have a puddle. It’s the same with life. To not enjoy one day in your life is not a big deal, but to not enjoy many of them – that’s significant. And at some point the tap will dry up, and we don’t know when that will be. What would you do with your last day? Would you spend it the way you’re spending today? Today may be your last…
Make sure you enjoy every day, and get excellent value from your time. You never know how much more of it you have.
