The Importance of Importance

Ever stop to think about how what you think is important…. isn’t?

Obviously it’s important right now – or you wouldn’t be thinking about it and dealing with it. But what was important, say, last Tuesday? See my point?

We rush through our lives acting like the issue that has our attention is the single most important thing in the world. But most of the time, it’s not. I’m not going to trot out the tired old ‘starving kids in Africa’ trope, but let’s be honest.

Limitation of the mind?

Maybe it has to do with our inability to think about more than one thing at any one time. We think we do, but we are really Timeslicing. Juggling. We think about many things in a serial fashion, and often in rapid succession. It makes us think we are multitasking, but we really are not. When we get to that ‘thing’ that we judge to be important, everything else sort of falls to second place while we deal with it.

Not that it matters

I’ve just been thinking lately that I have spent a bunch of my life just putting out fires. Dealing with the thing. And the next thing. And the next. And somehow, I’m 50-some years old now and find that I have spent precious little time taking care of the things that ARE really important. My wife. My family. My health. My friends.

What’s my point?

Nothing, really. I am not so arrogant as to believe that I know how people should live their lives. But I am going to put a lot more effort into trying to do a better job living mine. Because I only get this one.