When you watch the Sunrise

There are so many things, tasks, activities I need to do each day. 

Things necessary to live a healthy, balanced, full life. 

The life I chose. 

This isn't a complaint. 

And we live in a world with, 

so

much

choice

We think it is part of what makes us free. 

But I think it can handicap us. 

In ways we don't realize. 

I'm not making a case for streamlining your life. 

I'm not making a case for simplifying. 

I'm not making a case for any kind of deciding authority that ensures we're happy and satisfied so we don't have to think about it. 

I'm really more making some observations and working through how it has left me figuring out my own choices, my own decisions, how I set up my own daily life. 

Because when I started to think about this aspect of living, it was slightly overwhelming. I've written about it before: https://www.instagram.com/p/BV0oWmCgZ9W/?taken-by=akbarnard

I think with all the choices, we feel pressure to choose right. And then the right gets defined and that definition is usually very heavily biased by outside influences. 

One of the things I have always known deeply about myself is that I parent on instinct. It has served me well, and really left me with a sense of confidence I needed. 

Confidence. 

It is pretty amazing what that enables. 

I feel empowered to make choices I want to make. To think about how I'm spending my time and why. 

And then when I have days where I'm stretched thin, and feel like I'm doing for everyone and no one is doing for me I reflect on my choices. And, if needed I make new ones. 

Instead of responding to Ava's whines, or worrying about the timing of my morning, on Wednesday as I drove her to daycare, I watched the sky go from pink, to orange, to a tone of blue I'm not sure I'd seen before. I centered myself in that, and the day moved on from there. 

"Look at that sky, Ava." I said. And I said it to share, not because I needed her to look. It felt different. 

Maybe an answer is to choose to be a bit more present in what is happening. I do often come back to that. 

So what will you choose today? Is it truly your choice. How does it leave you feeling? 

You decide.