Ever notice how whenever you hear a story of someone who is presented with life-threatening news, you never hear the person say, “Well that’s it. I obviously haven’t spent nearly enough time working. I’m heading to the office –- I don’t have a minute to spare!”
Pretty ridiculous, huh?
Then why is it, when we’re NOT faced with life-threatening news, our actions suggest that work IS the most important thing in our lives? Notice I said actions. You can talk a big game about quality time and keeping first things first, but the proof of your real priorities is in your actions. Always.
Bob Kames died last month. You’ve probably never heard of him. But if you’ve been to a wedding in the past decade or two, I bet you’ve heard one of his biggest hits, the modern day version of “Dance Little Bird.”
More commonly known as “The Chicken Dance.”
Kames was successful in the music business and in show business, but a big life moment came in the mid 1960s. According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, he became gravely ill with stomach ulcers, and doctors told him that he was bleeding to death. His stomach was entirely removed. “As I lay there thinking about my life, it occurred to me that I hadn’t spent much time with my kids,” he said in 1968. “I decided to change things, if I lived, and among other things, take them to Disneyland.”
Adultitis is the disease that tricks us into thinking that unimportant stuff is actually important. That playfulness is a sign of weakness and seriousness is a sign of success.
Don’t be fooled. Make sure your actions match your priorities. And don’t wait for some bad news before you give yourself permission to spend more time with your kids (or go to Disneyland.)
Life is a grand production. You only get one shot. Be neither too foolish as to consider the playful moments mere distraction nor too afraid to be more than a wallflower.
Dance little bird, dance.
Thanks for the reminder, Jason, here and in the recent issue of the magazine. Thought you might like to know that, inspired by both, I just sat down and made a list of a dozen or so things that give me joy. And it felt good!
My pleasure, Jen. Kudos to you for taking action!
As much as I love reading your website, and others like yours, I have realized that reading about it, and actually doing something about it is 2 different matter.
Believe me, I’ve been a long-term reading of sites such as yours and am always comforted by the fact that there are people out there like you. I also talk about your sites, and my thoughts with my friends.
But lately, my friends have come to the conclusion that, yes, many people out there ditch their jobs to chase their dreams (or something less dramatic), but there are also just as many out there who go to work like we all do, live a 9-6 life and enjoy the weekends.
They’ve actually concluded that I’m torturing myself here because I read all these encouraging articles, dream all my dreams, but still am miserably stuck.
Don’t get me wrong. I love this article. And your site is very inspiring. But HOW do you actually get people out there to ACT and DO it?
How are we to ditch our salaries, health benefits, career prospects, etc, and go, say pursue our dream of volunteering in a third-world country?
I know it’s illogical, and I know all the arguments against staying at a job just for the money, perks, whatever. But still we are not taking action.
If we are, there will no longer be visitors to your site!
So how and where do people finally say and go, right, enough of reading….I’m gonna do it!? How do you get to that point?
Dora, great points. I really want to address some of these more in depth, so stay tuned for an upcoming post on this topic. Thanks for reading!