Longing to Do Something... Anything

Just this week, we signed the papers to lease our house in Houston.  It's an immense load off of my mind, since it had become frustrating to pay a mortgage on a house we weren't living in.  The place had been on the lease market for just a few weeks, but it was on the sale market since January.  So for the past few months, we have just been waiting, and even though we had a real estate agent, she really didn't give us many suggestions to get the house to sell. Sometimes, I wished for some assignment or recommendation for action, even if it ultimately only served to keep me busy doing something.  Sitting around and waiting with nothing to do felt a bit helpless.

I'm sure there are a lot of people in the same position right now, the housing market being what it is.  Since I'm the kind of person who likes to stay busy, I wanted to know what I could do to improve the chances of the house selling.  What color should I paint the walls?  Should we replace the windows?  What kind of flowers should we plant out front?  Do we need to pressure wash the brick?  Will replacing the carpet make a difference?  Should we stage the house in a particular way?  It ultimately wouldn't have mattered what I was doing exactly, I just wanted to feel like I was doing something to contribute to the house selling.  Maybe one new task every month or something.  Enough for me to have a clear sense of action, plus a little breathing room in between to evaluate if it made a difference.

If it doesn't already exist, it seems to me that there is a great career opportunity for a specialist who crunches the numbers and determines what malleable features are consistent among a high percentage of homes that are bought in a particular geographic area.  The color of the walls, the texture of the carpet, the size of the oven, the type of flowers by the front door.  Sure, a lot of those things can be changed by a new owner, but I know from personal experience that if I decide I can live with something until I have a little extra time and money to fix it, it could be a long time before I have a little extra money and time.  There's a big advantage to having something meet my specifications right out of the gate.

Now, I'm not suggesting that any of the little cosmetic changes I could have made would really have had any impact on whether the house sold or not.  I'm simply saying that a big part of me wanted to have something to do.  I wanted to feel like I was moving toward the goal of selling the house, and sitting back and doing nothing didn't feel like movement at all.  Our real estate agent was trying to save us unnecessary hassle and expense, weighing how much of an impact various factors would have based on a wealth of experience.  I'm grateful for the honest and conscientious feedback about how little control I had in the situation, even though I didn't like it.

Even though I don't consider myself to be a control freak, it still bugs me when I am in a position of just waiting with nothing to do.  Sometimes, though, there really isn't anything meaningful to be done.  Our busyness simply serves the same purpose as blowing on a hot spoonful of food: It doesn't really change the temperature of the food, but it gives us something to do for a moment or two while the food cools off naturally.  If we didn't take that moment of ineffectual activity, we might burn our tongues a lot more often.  I think the trick for me is to honestly recognize the actual value (or lack of value) of my activity and weigh whether that time and effort could be more enjoyably spent doing something else.  I suppose there really is no harm in spending my waiting time in fruitless activity, provided I'm clear that I'm really just keeping myself entertained.

Waves

I went to the beach for the first time in a long time today, and I was delighted to be in the presence of my four-year-old nephew. The big attraction was wave jumping, and I noticed a ton of things as I observed and participated in this simple activity.

First off, I couldn't predict much about the waves. I could see them coming in, and I could be fairly confident that more were on their way. But there was not a regular interval between them, and there was no way to predict exactly where they would break. Sometimes they would look immense as they approached, only to break far enough out that their impact was minimal. Sometimes they would crash against us one right after the other. Sometimes I was surprised, and once even knocked over, by their unexpected force. And the waves didn't impact everyone equally, even people standing fairly close together.

My nephew's reaction to them was also very educational. He was primarily concerned with how the waves would impact him, nobody else. It was utter playfulness. He would mostly jump to try to clear them. Sometimes he would hold on to someone, jumping up but staying more or less in one place as a wave passed. Sometimes he would let the wave carry him a little bit. Once or twice he even got a face full of salt water unexpectedly, after which he quickly wiped off his face, smiled at his miscalculation, and got ready for the next one.

As much for myself as for you, I'll just connect the dots here. Life will happen. I don't know what it will throw at me, and even if I notice something approaching, I don't really know that I will accurately predict how hard it will impact me. My experience will be uniquely my own, but I can hold on to others when I want to maintain my stability. I can let life carry me or I can exert my own effort, but I can't control anything beyond myself. In any case, I can be playful with life. I might get an unexpected splash, and I might even get knocked down, but I can stand back up and smile and get ready for what comes next. And there will always be something coming next. Something moving. Something calling me into motion.

The Web

I had a rehearsal with several intermediate school musicians yesterday. During my time at the school, I observed a remarkable exchange. One student was having a little trouble with his trombone piece. His teacher first asked if there were any notes he had a question about, and the student replied, Yes. The teacher then asked one of his peers to help him out. The other student very kindly and graciously worked for a moment with his fellow trombonist, and the rehearsal went on from there.

This was only a remarkable exchange for me as an observer. To the students and teacher, it seemed to be rather commonplace. But I see so much competition and so little compassion from day to day, even among people who are supposedly on the same team, that it was impressive to see genuine cooperation in action.

What would change in our lives if we all generously and kindly served, and graciously accepted service from, one another? What would change in our jobs? What would change in our families? What would change in our driving experience? What would change in our economy? What would change in our government?


Long before there was an internet, shamans believed in a different sort of world-wide web. A spiritual web of existence that connects all things. They held that what we do creates reverberations along that web, and it has an impact of which we may not even be aware. Whether we subscribe to this view or not, I believe what we do as individuals has incredible reach and unfathomable power. What are we doing with it?