How Much WORK Does it Take to Make a Difference?

Sitting here with my long list of things "to get done" today... feeling slightly tired and overwhelmed before I even get started.

Makes me wonder how often our lives pass by — and how much of our lives pass by — in the pervasive process of dealing with lots of little things that seem to make no difference whatsoever... and yet everything comes crashing down, if we don't diligently attend to them.

Older boat on the bay...

The lives we have built — ostensibly in pursuit of success? The "good life?" Happiness? — seem to have gotten so complex and cluttered that the very process of striving for them is actually the primary obstacle in even approaching them.

One of my "things" in life — "what I write about," if you will — is to explore the way we do things and shining the light on aspects of our existence that seem broken and/or perhaps in need of a change.

"Things," perhaps, that we could all benefit from having a bit of a discussion about.

Changing Times, Changing Paradigms?

Maybe part of the problem is simply the times in which we live.

In order to "keep up," we have to manage the every growing information stream that comes at us every day... and since the day still has the same number of hours, we get less and less time to spend per task.

I realize that a good bit of my stress these days comes from the feeling that I would really rather do ten things for an hour each than 100 things for five minutes each.

A single flower blooms in winter...

No wonder we are so often talking about living in an "ADHD world." We are practically required to behave in an ADHD-like manner in order to simply keep up with everything!

How can that possibly be good for us?

Human BE-ings, Human DO-ings and Human HAVE-ings

There's another old truism that goes something like "Jack of many trades but master of none."

And I suppose that's my sticking point. How do we ever get to a point of "mastery" of anything if we never have time to sit still and focus on a single thing for long enough to reach mastery?

And — beyond that — how can we get back in touch with the essence of living as human BE-ings, rather than Human DO-ings?

This post is in the water...

I have raised this question before, but the discussion seldom extends beyond simply leaving things at some version of "it's a sign of the times!"

That may be entirely true!

But are we prepared to idly stand by as helpless passive passengers in our own lives... and just watch things go by, without pausing to question "Is it WORKING?"

Personally, I don't want to be a passenger in my own life... I want to be one of the game masters!

How about YOU? Does it ever feel like you have too many "little bits" in your plate of life, rather than a few "big bits?" If so, it that what you prefer? Is it inevitable, given the speed at which data develops, every year? Have we lost our right to say "this simply isn't WORKING, so I am not buying into it!" Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As always, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 190112 16:01 PST