I used to be a type A person (and still am!). You know the type. I’m that type of person who feels if I’m not doing something, I’m totally wasting time. I am that type of person who likes “to do lists.”
I grew up being nurtured into believing that work is what life is all about. I can still hear my dad teaching us kids, “Work, work, work.” I was brought up by a society that thinks this way and reared up by teachers who give us greater worth as students when we perform well. I grew up thinking that my worth as a person is equal to the amount of work I put in. Worst of all, I am that type of person who gets really upset when those people around me are not doing their responsibilities as they are expected to. In short, I am often a miserable person. 🙁
I am supposed to be a man of faith and yet because of this nature, prayer has been difficult for me at times because I feel it is getting in the way of me accomplishing something for the day. One time, I was invited to take a walk up the San Gabriel mountain trails and I felt like I was going to waste three hours of precious time. Hmmm… Three hours! That’s a lot of time wasted! List of things to do march one by one in my mind. I could do gardening. I could vacuum the floor. I can paint a bedroom. I can start learning Spanish. I can study how to edit video movies.
Now that I am older, I started seeing how wrong I am when I have this attitude! Praying and meditating during my hiking are not wasted hours but invested hours. How many times in my life when it was through prayer that I found strength. Taking the time to walk to appreciate God’s beautiful creation is not a waste. So many occasions in my life, I found wisdom and peace through solitude and meditation. Taking time to press the “pause” button in life is important.
Out of the silence in my life I hear the whispers of my GOD. Out of quiet comes the understanding that I have people who love me and that I have a wife and a family who care a lot. And best of all, I realize that I care for them too… and what really matters is not how I perform or what I have accomplished. More important than performance is the relationship I have with my friends, my family and my God.