Living With Intention

I have a magnet on my refrigerator with several statements that challenge me. I bought it at a time in my life when I was emotionally fragile. It encouraged me, and, a number of years later, continues to motivate me to take risks and grow.

 The very first statement on it is “Live with intention.” I’ve been thinking about that frequently, especially as life shifts yet again with the pandemic. Last year, when everything shut down, I committed to use the time as “Covid Retreat,” reflecting on what matters in my life, and what I really didn’t miss. Now, as more and more activities come back on line, the challenge for me is to be intentional about what I add back.

 I’m not alone in this. Just this week I had a parking lot conversation with a friend who was telling me all the meetings she had already attended this week (it was Tuesday) and the reason I was seeing her then was she was heading to another meeting. Yet she also talked about how much she and her husband had enjoyed last spring’s shutdown, where she could have unscheduled time guilt-free.

 Why do we have to feel guilty about having unscheduled time? I struggle with this too. And it’s why I’m particularly focused on that statement “Live with intention.” I don’t want to simply jump back into the fray of busyness because I can. Like falling in a rushing river, once I allow myself to get caught up in the flow of busyness, it’s hard to extract myself.

 To live with intention says to me that I need to be conscious about what I am doing and why I am doing it. I’m reading a book right now entitled, The Joy of Missing Out: Finding Balance in a Wired World. Though its focus is about our reliance (or maybe better said, our overreliance) on smartphones and the internet, it is causing me to think about overall balance in my life.

 At the end of the day, (in the literal sense) I want to be able to look back at how I spent my day and know what I did and why I did it. This is living with intention.

 How are you handling the increasing availability of pre-pandemic activities? Are you being intentional about what you resume? Maybe it’s a good time to consider what are the activities that truly matter to you and what is simply filler—not necessarily bad, but also not purposeful for your life and health.

 Thoreau said, “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” Choosing to live with intention then, makes us truly rich.