Breaking The Deadline

I have to admit, it’s rather ironic that the one word that kept running around in my mind these past few weeks, is “deadline”.  Ironic in the sense that the deadline for this blog crept up on me like Luke Skywalker on that ominous Death Star; I did not see it coming!  But here I am, penning down a piece about deadlines while almost missing my deadline on this piece about deadlines.

In all honesty, I (and I suspect many of you) thoroughly and passionately hate deadlines.  Unfortunately deadlines are an integral part of our daily lives and unless you strap on a jetpack and leave this planet, you’ll find it very hard to escape them.  And, to be fair, they are actually a necessary part of helping a business or company achieve their goals, reaching their ideals and delivering on their promises.  I guess you could say in a sense a promise is just a lie if there’s no deadline.

But I’ve come to realize that I have gotten into the habit of burdening myself with deadlines that shouldn’t even be deadlines.  At first this thought seemed ridiculous to me, but the more I spent time on it, I realized that somewhere in the back of my mind I always found that I was racing towards something; putting time limits on things that no-one forced me to put a time limit on in the first place.

For instance, I find myself forever dividing my evenings into how much time I have before I absolutely have to go to sleep, because that would dictate how many episodes of my favourite series I can squeeze in.  I know I’m the only person in the whole wide world that does this, right?  Also, I constantly have to stop myself from feeling like I’m missing out on stuff because I haven’t had the time yet to experience them, mainly because you think you have to have certain things in your life in place by the time you reach a certain age.

This kind of thinking definitely has a negative effect on my emotions and if I don’t make my self-inflicted deadline, I feel disappointed and that I have somehow failed at something.  Writing it down like this causes a cock-your-head-to-the-side-with-a-“duh”-frown reaction, because how do I not know this?  Isn’t this supposed to be common sense?

Not so much.  I get sucked in by the busyness and deadlines around me and I am pretty sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.

So I’ve made a decision: walk slower.  Just let those two words sink in for a second. I realized that by deliberately walking slower I allow myself more time to see things, hear things, experience things, meet people.  It forces me to spend more time in a particular place, putting me in the perfect position to open up to things that I otherwise never would have noticed were there.

Let me tell you, I’ve been doing this for the past month and I’ve noticed a difference.  The less I rush towards imaginary deadlines, the more I carefully pick the things I want to spend time on; and that means that my spirit and my heart becomes healthier, which opens them up to even more invigorating experiences and moments.  Even my mind has started wandering towards more creative places, and we all know that a creative mind is a healthy mind!

If you're up for the challenge I dare you to deliberately focus your mind away from your unnecessary deadlines.  In doing so you will be breaking the deadline and opening up your life to so much more.  Walk slower.

Born To Run

The opening scenes of two of my favourite TV shows feature someone running for dear life:  One of them is running through snow-covered woods in the middle of the night, while the other is scaling treacherous mountainous terrain on an uncharted island on an overcast day.  Both of them are running because their lives depend on it.

As the snow turns her bare feet into ice and the woods loom over her like the bringer of doom it always appears to be in the dark, Max is running away from captivity, experimentation, torture and militant brainwashing. Oliver’s tortured body barely even registers the pain inflicted by the sharp and jagged edges of the mountains he’s grown so accustomed to during the last five years, but now at least he is running towards something: his home, his family and his destiny.

The above situations aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.  In its most basic form it stands to reason that when you are running away from something it also means that you are running towards something else.  More than once in my life I’ve run.  I’m still running.

Let me ask you this:

Do you ever feel like you are standing outside of your life?  Even with everyone and everything around you, do you feel isolated, maybe even hunted?  It might even seem that you are parallel to this world you exist in, but you are not in it?  Almost like two train tracks that run alongside each other but they never intersect.

You’ve considered running, physically running away and starting a life somewhere different; somewhere that allows you to start with a clean slate, a new vision, a different mind-set.  But where do you run?  What would you have to do to run away completely, disappear completely?  Or do you just distance yourself emotionally and mentally from everyone and everything around you?  How would that affect the people in your life that care about you?  What do you tell them when you stand at the door with a bag in your hand and no real plans for the immediate future?

In all honesty, I’ve had this feeling many times before.  I’ve dreamed of packing a bag with the bare necessities, skipping town (skipping my life) and making my way somewhere so different it would force me to be completely different.  I even had a mental checklist:  Close bank accounts, delete email accounts, Facebook accounts, all social media traces.

I’ve found myself longing for the open road, a new beginning and an opportunity at anonymity in a strange and new land, but I didn’t know why I had this turmoil inside of me, why my heart ached for such freedom and my soul longed for a new identity.  Sometimes you experience urgency inside your spirit that pushes you so hard that you feel you need to take drastic steps to distance yourself from whatever is holding you back.  Maybe your gift, your passion, your calling, your destiny is setting you apart.  Maybe that is the thing that is hiking up your heart rate, causing the shallow breathing; almost like you are being chased.

Does running help?  Maybe.  If not running, what then?  Could running be channelled into something else?  Possibly.  Every single one of us is unique.  So my urgency to run will definitely be different from yours.  It doesn’t mean it’s wrong; it doesn’t mean it’s right.  All it means is that we need to figure out why we feel compelled to run and where we are being pushed towards.

So figure out your why and where.  The best way to do this?  I would suggest that it’s about having an open and honest heart to heart with God.  After all, He’s the one that created you for exactly this time and place.

So turn to Him.  You might end up running into the outstretched arms of your destiny…