My Beautiful Obligations

Oh, those beautiful obligations we all have.  But what do you do when you just can’t do it?  Not that you can’t, actually, but that you don’t want to. You know those days when you wake up and you just aren’t feeling it?  You roll over in bed and secretly hope it’s 3am, so you can pull the covers up over your head and go back to sleep.  Or maybe you’re sick, but not sick enough to stay in bed all day.  Still, you don’t feel like doing anything at all.

I’m one of those people who always gets up and goes to work.  Or if I have a date with a friend, I’m going to drag myself out and go, because I said I would.  That’s what grown-ups do, right?  It’s very rare for me to allow myself the luxury of skipping out on my obligations.  I see every commitment as an obligation.  It might be a beautiful one.  But it’s still an obligation.  It’s a promise that must be kept.

Keeping Promises

The problem is, I have a very rich and rewarding life.  I have so many interests that it’s hard to pack everything in.  I remember my early married years when I was building my career.  Even though I worked two jobs, and my husband had a great job, we were pretty much broke all of the time. Still, I played darts twice weekly, and co-edited a 16-page magazine format newsletter. I was always the first to raise my hand.  I was a board member, and Area Governor for the largest dart league in the country…at 22 years old.

By the mid-80’s I was singing in Sweet Adelines International, a musical organization for women dedicated to a cappella singing in the barbershop harmony style. Back then, and even now, I kept busy with my chorus and quartet, and I served on the board of directors and music staff of my chorus and on the Regional Management team, and music faculty.  I highly recommend getting involved in a non-profit organization.  The leadership skills I gained in serving on these boards taught me more than I ever learned in corporate management.  If you can lead a group of volunteer workers, it’s a lot easier to motivate people who are being paid to work. You will learn valuable skills, make life-long friendships, and give back to your community in tangible ways.  Pick something you’re passionate about and get involved.

Beautiful Obligations

So, you get my drift.  I’ve always been over-committed in basically everything I do.  On top of all of this extra-curricular stuff, I love to make a beautiful home, travel, shop, and throw fun parties.  I have family and friends that I love and want to do things with and for.  It’s just really hard to fit everything in sometimes.  I have a lot of promises to keep.

I often have very metaphoric dreams.  Once, I dreamt that I lived in a world where we each had to carry our own obligations with us wherever we went. These obligations looked like beautiful, iridescent balls of light that were both weightless and heavy. You could collect as many as you could carry. When I met people on the street, they could give me one of their “obligations”, or I might give them one of mine.  They were different colors, and they were fun to collect.

My Hands Were Too Full

In my dream, people kept asking me to carry one of theirs. They were so beautiful that I readily agreed. Eventually my hands became too full, and it was difficult to free a hand to take a new one.  They started slipping between my fingers. I would chase the bouncy rolling orb and try to squeeze it back into my hand through the underside of my fingers, but then another would drop out the other side. Nobody would help by picking it up and placing it on top of the others in my hands. Nobody wanted to take any of mine.  I awoke in a panic because I was unable to carry all of the beautiful obligations that people kept giving me, and nobody would take those I offered in return.

This dream happened 20 years ago. Around the same time, I got a small butterfly tattoo as a symbol of a personal, emotional metamorphosis I had gone through. One of my dear friends found a lovely pewter butterfly dish for me for my birthday a few months later. While at the county fair, I found marbles that reminded me of my beautiful obligations, and it all came magically together.

These have sat on my desk for 20 years as a reminder of my beautiful obligations. No matter how captivating, only a precise number will fit in the vessel or they roll away. The memory, the dream and all it stands for, makes me happy.

The Moral of the Story

I loved Aesop’s Fables as a kid, I also loved Fractured Fairy Tales from the Bullwinkle Show. So, the moral of this story is to be careful not to take on too many obligations.  Even when they are beautiful, and fun, you really can’t do it all.  This is in direct conflict with one of my life motto’s that I learned from someone close to me…always say yes.  You just have to grab the brass ring and take the opportunities that present themselves.  We sometimes only get one chance, and I have built an amazing life by saying yes, and experiencing success, even when I probably shouldn’t have.  What some people view as mistakes, or failures, I see as important lessons learned.  Maybe that’s my resilience in action.

Don’t take on too many obligations, and always keep your promises. On the very rare days that I wake up and just can’t do it, I still do something.  For instance, I woke up yesterday totally uninspired to write.  The schedule I set for myself is to post three times a week, and to do back-end stuff on the other two days.  But yesterday, I just couldn’t write.  Instead, I did some necessary clean-up on my site.  I responded to correspondence.  There were lesson assignments to catch up. I was still productive, but I didn’t do what I had originally scheduled.  Fortunately, I was able to switch it up because I had yesterday’s article written and scheduled in advance. I had credit in the integrity bank.  I habitually do what I say I’ll do.

Do What You Say You’ll Do

That’s the beauty of keeping your promises, even if they’re only to yourself.  I could have simply done nothing yesterday and nobody would have been the wiser.  But it’s important to me to stay on track, and because I do keep my promises, I have a little bit of credit in the bank to switch things up when I need to.  So do the work.  Keep your promises. Set yourself up for success so you’ll have space to pick up those beautiful obligations when they present themselves. Oh, and if you just can’t add one more thing to your schedule when asked, simply tell them you can’t. You have promises you need to keep.

What life lessons have snuck up on you in weird and wonderful ways? I can’t wait to hear about them!