Meeting deadlines, making resolutions

Has your life this past year been one long deadline? Have you been chasing your tail to make a deadline, or has it been a dead or dying time, especially as the old year has drawn to a close?

For those of us who are busy—overly busy probably—it is hard to imagine that there are times when there is little to look forward to day by day. Maybe one is unemployed, has been retrenched or has actually chosen to slow down and take life easier, retire, watch the daisies grow and smell the flowers.

Where is the happy medium—or is it an individual choice dependent on one’s personality and life situation?  I think it must be all of those. I must be a busy person by nature, or possibly by nurture. With my Dutch background, my mother would not allow us to be wasting time. That was the work ethic in our family that has, I believe, been passed on to my children, to a degree.

However, I do envy people who can be relaxed about taking time out or enjoying a long holiday. My late husband Chris was more inclined in that direction, but I never allowed us to have long holidays; short breaks, even with deadlines, are my modus operandi—something that did cause us grief at times.

A family, as a web of relationships and different personalities, does have members with different inclinations at different times of their lives. Parents, one or both, mostly are the ones with deadlines, usually work-related, that do impinge on family time. Teenagers are mostly the slobs who can sleep till midday, idle through the hours—even school hours—but can, if necessary, be moved to observe a deadline or two. Some children are highly energetic, even hyperactive (which is another issue).

Deadlines are imposed by ourselves or by others to whom we are accountable. For peaceful and harmonious living, and often for sheer survival, deadlines must be observed.

Deadlines do cause a lot of stress, as can be seen in the career-minded young adults whose work commitments prevent them from looking to a more settled future. “When are you two going to getting married?” one might ask such a young person. “No time to think about it,” they might reply.

At the other extreme there are also many unemployed youth with little sense of a future that could possibly be filled with at least a few deadlines.

Do we need deadlines? Yes, for better or worse we do—but resolutions are equally necessary; resolutions about a job, about financial needs, education, a lifestyle, maintaining one’s health and about the deadlines that dam up in front of us.

As a working widow without too many family commitments, the deadlines that control my life at this stage are mainly publication related, and they do determine my comings and goings. But a resolution about when and how to sell my house and downsize is slow in coming and is likely to be forced on me by outside circumstances and other deadlines. Such is family life even at this time of life.

The bishops’ Family Life Desk’s  theme for 2011, “Peace On Earth Begins At Home”, also calls for some resolutions. Each month there is an aspect of peace, justice and reconciliation relating to family life to reflect on.

The year begins with the January theme, Mother Teresa’s wise words: “Peace begins with a smile.” If each of us, in all our families, were to resolve to choose that as a way of living, maybe even the deadlines that weigh us down could be less burdensome. It’s not only the Lord who loves a cheerful giver.

Happy New Year to all.