Our True Wealth

Now that I am good friends with the folks at Sunset Magazine [wink wink], I read each new issue with gusto. In the April 2010 magazine, I was thrilled and surprised when I bumped in an article written by one of my most favorite authors, Anne Lamott. I had to blink a few times because this author seemed a bit out of context in Sunset, but after I read the article it all made sense.

Anne’s honest and insightful writings about women, women and their children, women and their relationships, and our never ending quest to live up to a greater greatness are always spot on. In the Sunset article, titled Time Lost and Found, she shares her wisdom on how critical it is to make time for wonder. And then she goes on to squash all of our excuses for why we don’t.

I am not always a fan of regurgitating someone else’s thoughtful writings in my blog, but this was too good to pass up. Anne’s core belief is “that there is nothing you can buy, achieve, own, or rent that can fill up that hunger inside for a sense of fulfillment and wonder.” She brilliantly sums this up by saying “...creative expression...can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.”

That is such a brilliant statement, isn’t it?

As a self-admitted multi-tasker extraordinaire, never-take-a-nap-in-the-daytime, finger-flinging keyboard junkie, this simple point caught my attention. How many times have I complained that I don’t have time? Sadly, too often. And I know I’m not alone. I hear it from my sisters, my friends, my co-workers, Facebookers. It’s such a tired excuse for all of us well-intentioned right-brainers who are endlessly trying to juggle personal responsibility with personal fulfillment.

You know who you are.

So, what is Anne’s holy advice for seizing the quiet moments needed for creative expression and enlightenment? “Demand it” she says. “Time is not free, that is why it’s so precious and worth fighting for.” And when Anne asks if we want our “...our children to grow up to become adults who spend this one precious life in a spin of multitasking, stress, and achievement...will [we] be pleased that [our] kids also pursued this kind of whirlwind life?” Ouch. No.

Yes, it will hurt, she warns, but it’s more important to live deeply and be present. So in Anne’s words....”Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.”

Read the whole article HERE.