The journey continues - days four and five...

You know when you just have one of those days, the kind where one thing just kind of melds into the next, and so on... Well it occurs to me like the last few days have gone like that, regardless of how much time and effort I have put into listing out and planning, in great detail I may add, all of the items I have to do! Life just seems to be all about doing and when that happens to me, I find myself becoming almost robotic like in manner, not allowing myself to be present to the wonder gifts that surround me on a daily basis.

This was never more evident than on day four, as I needed to give something away to honor my agreement. My experience was something like I'd better do something, almost like I was doing so because I had to, as opposed to wanting to, a big difference in context I would have to say. Because I was so busy and had many things to do, I cannot at this moment, even recall what the gift was. But I did it and the conversations (aka justifications) in my head were something like "yes but I am so busy...blah, blah blah".

Well today in the middle of one of my "doings" I had a thought. To digress, I was busy again, this time in the middle of digging out of my storage locker a stove which my wife had agreed to give to a complete stranger. As I located it and cleared a path to the door for it, I noticed that it was rather dirty, having been in there for quite some time. I thought I would just give it a quick wipe, leaving the cleaning it really needed to the new owners, after all they were getting it for free. (how arrogant is that statement)

It was in the middle of that quick wiping that I allowed myself a moment to recall how many years ago I was a recipient of a washer that someone had given to me, to replace a broken one that I had and could not afford to purchase a new one. I recall that despite being used and many years old, it looked great. There were the usual dings and dents that come with age (not unlike those lost hairs, wrinkles and aching back that I can attest to), but it was clean, function-able and made a huge difference to myself and my young family at the time.

I remember how grateful I was for the efforts of someone to have taken the time to prepare this for me, to have given it the attention required to complete the task right. I call that "ownership mentality", the willingness to do something to the level for others that you would only do for yourself.

Well I am happy to share that I wiped down every inch of that stove, both inside and out, front and back. I can proudly say that it was cleaner today than most of the time it spent in my kitchen. Yes one can say that it was two hours spent that I'll never get back, time I could have used to comple several other items on my list of "doings". To that I would say, if only you could have seen the smiles on the faces of it's new owners, it was time well spent!

It was what I would call a win-win-win situation. A win - they left happy with a clean "new" stove; a win - for me as I felt the full of love and spent the remainder of my day sharing that love with others (a win - for all those I encountered), smiling and laughing, all while completing more tasks on my list of "doings".

And the journey continues...