What would happen if everyone took a few minutes every day doing something they totally loved doing: playing basketball, crocheting a sweater, bowling, riding their motorcycle, camping out, painting, playing an instrument, planting a garden, stargazing, birdwatching, bungee jumping, cooking, playing with their dog…Every person, everywhere, every day. What would happen? What would the world be like? Can you imagine it?
I just spent a half hour playing my guitar and singing. I came home from work very tired, from nonstop meetings to the 70-minute commute, stopping at the store for creamer for my morning coffee, and walking the dog around the yard for 20 minutes. I came inside, fed her, then took my guitars back to my room and for the first time since leaving California (and for a few weeks prior to that) I played my guitar and sang my little heart out. One of the advantages of living in a single-family home versus a condo where you share walls with your neighbors is that you can’t really belt out a good song as loud as you want to for fear of disturbing them. So I sang and sang until my voice got a little hoarse and decided I’d better stop for a bit. But it got me thinking about how different the world would be if everyone took a little time every day to do something they loved.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to do something they love for a living. Many people work places they wouldn’t necessarily go to if they had a choice to do something else someplace else. Most people manage to make the best of this situation, finding things in their jobs that they enjoy doing enough to keep them going there. Some people absolutely love what they’re doing to the extent that they can’t imagine doing anything else and feel incredibly lucky to be getting paid to do something they’d do for free. Some of us come to love what we do even though perhaps it didn’t start out that way. And then there are some people who are downright miserable at their jobs, they don’t like their work and dread getting up and going there every day. But what if everybody was given an hour or so every day to do something they totally loved doing. Would it change the workplace? Would people be kinder and gentler to one another? Would it make any difference at all in the world. I have to think so.
Life has its stresses and disappointments, its challenges and triumphs, its ups and downs. Sometimes we are too busy or too tired or too something else to devote a little time to doing something we love. I know, sometimes it takes too much energy even to do something you enjoy doing. Sometimes the most difficult part of the process is picking up the guitar or walking out onto the basketball court, or dusting off your paints and canvas. Once you get started, immersing yourself in this forgotten passion, the exhaustion melts away and you lose all sense of time for a little while. You are totally in it. If you have a passion, a hobby, a gift or talent you love to practice and you have the means and opportunity to do it, you simply must find ways to do it. It will feed your soul and make some of the perhaps less palatable aspects of life so much more tolerable if not downright enjoyable. There are many hobbies I’ve sort of stopped doing over the past couple of years. I’m not sure when or how I’m going to take them back up given time constraints and other impedimenta intruding upon my ability to restart them, but I’m determined I’m going to get back to at least one of them sometime soon.
I am grateful for the gift of music and what it represents in my life. “Sing!” my friend joHn admonishes me frequently, and I do my best to do just that–belting out songs in my car on my way to work some mornings. But it’s even more special when I’m playing my guitar and singing my favorite songs–my own or other’s. I can close my eyes and feel the song (which I can’t do when I’m in my car on the way to work!) Whatever that well-loved activity is for you, please, find a way to do it. Make the space in your life, in your house, in your back yard, in your heart to do this. You won’t be disappointed. In fact, you just might start a revolution.
