I attended today a parent meeting for the upcoming Family day at school where my 7 years old daughter go. I was late because of headache and laundry and my youngest child’s tantrums and my husband’s still not done with work and my own paper at school due. When I arrived, the parent attendees were all ready to leave and seems they are done for the day but they went back as soon as they saw me. I was embarrassed of course for being late and for stopping them from leaving.
We went through the whole talk of the activity which will be in two weeks time. The preparation to the dance presentation, costumes and the whole shebang. We haven’t figured out what to dance so we still have a long way to go.
One parent approached me that she might be having a difficulty with the practices due to work and that she’s very busy and another parent saying that she too has less amount of time with these extra-curricular things because again busy. As a mother of two, a worker, a wife, a student and between all other things I do in life, I didn’t know how to respond to them because I understand how the things we do in life are overwhelming us. Being a parent is an altogether a demanding job.
What struck me though is how conveniently we use the busy word in this age and how it’s become the shortest word we can come up with as an excuse. I also have challenges with managing my time and I could still vividly recall what my mentor told me about being busy and with time. She said, “We cannot manage time, we can only manage ourselves with the little time we have”. This is what I always remember whenever I get hit with the busy word. We are not busy, we just prioritize and spend time on things we think as important. My only problem is that I am sucker with saying “No”, which I find myself over committing and this results to me either over-stretching myself and or disappointing people for under or not delivering at all.
As I go along my journey as a mother, I have learned basic principles, laws and lessons of the choices I make. The mistakes that drives me to change and the triumphs that keeps me inspired. One of the mantra that have kept me afloat is that on priorities I am a mother first, a worker second and a student third but this as simple as it may seem is still not to be taken lightly and while I may be guided by this mantra, the others can sometimes be overbearing and overtake the first priority. Today, I was reminded of this and of how the school activities is my duty as a mother and that my involvement in my daughter’s life is one of the most important duty as a parent.
So why I started to decide that busy is our reality today, it still shouldn’t keep us from deciding what’s important and what can wait.
count.steps.forward 