Saturday, March 13, 2010

"Time change" is a good pair of words to think about. I don't just mean cherry blossoms, daffodils, spring breezes, lack of sleep. I mean, "Could it be time to change?" It's not just when we are in the midst of cancer or the like that we can consider change. It can come whenever we make space in our lives to welcome it. I just heard about the basketball coach at Boston University, who was a "six-figure salesman." He was assaulted late at night, coming out of a bar, by a broken-glass-wielding attacker. His face and neck still show terrible scars, and he says he almost died. In the hospital, he decided his life wasn't a good fit and he wanted to coach. Slowly, after his recovery, he built that life for himself. What's magical about the hospital? Time. The time for reflection isn't built into our lives. Maybe such time was never built into human lives, but it seems as if time to reflect has recently gone AWOL. I have heard many talks about using the 15 minutes parked outside the school, picking up the kid from his or her activity, to write. But you can also use it to do nothing but think. How well does your life fit? Is there a life you can imagine that would work better? How might you get there?