I suspect most time management experts, counselors, and spiritual directors, would tell me that the reason tension exists in my own life is because of my failure to set clear priorities and be faithful to them and that this sloppy indecisiveness is unfair to everyone on every side.
Ron Rolheiser, OMI
THE BEST ONE CAN DO IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES
If am over-extended, it’s a fault in my life, pure and simple, which I have a moral responsibility to correct. But is it really that simple? Are we really meant to have this much control of over our lives? Don’t circumstance and need perennially trump that? There are needs everywhere and our resources are finite. Isn’t that always a formula for tension?
Circumstance conscripts us and, in the words of Jesus, puts a rope around us and takes where we would rather not go, namely, beyond our comfort, beyond always being adequately rested, and beyond always being in control of our own timetable and energies. Admittedly it’s dangerous to over-extend yourself, except that it’s equally dangerous to under-extend yourself so as to always have full control of your own energy and commitments and be always well rested and not over-taxed. We can burnout, but we can also rust-out.
This, of course, can easily become a rationalization for not setting proper priorities and for letting ourselves be non-reflectively buffeted by circumstance. But the opposite can also be a rationalization used to over-protect our own comfort and rest. That’s the tension, and it’s meant to be a tension. Sometimes we overextend ourselves and sometimes we under-extend ourselves.
We have finite energies, finite time, finite attention, and we are constantly swamped by circumstance, need, and pressure. We are often caught in a major tension as regards our time, energy, and attention. In any given season within our lives, if we are honest, we might have to say: This wasn’t the best I might have done ideally, but it’s the best that I could do, given the circumstance!
And that should be more than enough when we stand before our Maker in judgment.
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