How It All Began

A couple of years ago I made a homecoming trip to my college alma mater where I visited with several old college friends. We spent the weekend recalling the many experiences we had shared during those years, both fun and otherwise: parties exciting and boring, intramural games won and lost, fraternity pranks successful and foiled. It was great fun reliving the old days, and on the way home my wife Sylvia, who had been a good sport to sit through the weekend listening to it all, asked me, "Why don't you have friends like that anymore?"

"Because I don't have time," was my answer, an answer that got me thinking. Why don't I have time to have friends? What am I doing with my time? As I began to be more aware of how I was spending my time, and more deliberate in deciding how to spend it, I gradually came to realize that for too long I had been doing a lot of things solely because I thought I was "supposed" to do them: that was just what people like me did. I was "keeping up with the Joneses" not only in material possessions but in time management, too.

I came across a book by Carl Honoré, In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed. His epiphany came when he found himself reading one-minute bedtime stories to his two-year-old in an effort to save time. Preposterous, right? And yet I realized that I too, in a misguided quest to maximize personal efficiency, was shortchanging my family, my friends, and myself in a quest to do more, more, more. When the kids were little and I was caught up in a flurry of diaper changes and feeding times, it was tempting to think, "I can't wait until this phase is over." But be careful what you wish for, because in the blink of eye it is over, and the kids are gone. I was so caught up in doing the stuff that dads do that I was missing the joys of being a father. What else was my crazy busy schedule causing me to miss? Should my life really be measured only by my productive output?

And so began the personal journey that has become Present Tense Living. How do I spend my time? Why do I spend it that way? What do I want to do with my time? What does God want me to do with my time? Perhaps these questions ring true for you, too. My purpose for exploring them is not a quixotic effort to do nothing--I'm not ready for early retirement--but instead is my attempt to ensure that I spend my time in the way that I want to based on my God-given talents, abilities, and desires. It is fine to be busy. But I want to be busy on things that matter to me.

Do you feel in control, or out of control, of your time?