Half-done or incomplete tasks make me feel jittery at best. If I’m honest, unfinished business makes me ill-at-ease and a tad grumpy. I guess it messes with my peace of mind.
Giving up your peace. Now that’s an interesting concept. I once heard of something called a “peace- threshold,” which is the level of pain or discomfort at which you yield your peace of mind, to your circumstances.
Many of us will tap-dance just up to the plate of that threshold and retreat into stubborn possession of our peace. We fall back onto our default, “I won’t give up,” attitude that keeps us in play and we refuse to yield to negative circumstances.
I know some people whose peace is achieved amidst an environment that would throw mine into a tailspin. I wonder about how this state of peace is attained on different levels in different people.
Some people are totally okay with projects left “up in the air.” Uncertainty totally unsettles some of us; others take it more as a matter of course. I confess that I am one of the ones who gets tetchy when a certain undetermined amount of time passes with things unfinished.
I have a very small stack of papers on my desk, next to the telephone. I’ll have to deal with them at some point as they are, in essence, my perennial to-do list. This is what I call needling stuff, kept on the back burner.
The back burner is where we simmer stuff that isn’t the main course. Needling stuff jabs me occasionally, reminding me that it’s still there and hasn’t been dealt with yet, but isn’t so time-sensitive that it needs dealt with now.
I think there is something to peaceniks’ interpretation of reality. For example, there are thousands of potentially fulfilling experiences wrapped up in the process of things. But some of us, living tenuously in peace, fixate on what we want to achieve and cease to capture the joy in our moments.
“Don’t make it happen, let it happen.” This was the gist of a recent dream of mine. My takeaway is to let the future come to meet me and treasure the past for what it was.
My great-nephew, who is in his late twenties forwarded this Facebook post recently: “I’m an adult which means I don’t have any hobbies; if I have any free time at all I will go lie down.” He’s my kind of young man.
Do you have time to spare? Can anyone really have extra time? Remember the guy in the Bible (Hezekiah) to whom God actually gave some extra time, fifteen more years to be exact? As I recall he blew it, got into trouble and it wasn’t a blessing after all.
There’s only so much time in a day. Have we all been assigned a certain amount of time on earth? If so, how can one have time to spare?
Someone has surely said to you at some point in your life, “give it some time.” Often this is when you’re suffering some sort of loss, insult, or injury from which you are in one or another stage of recovery or acceptance.
We live in an instant culture with infinite promise. So, it’s no wonder that waiting for anything is an excruciating endeavor for most of us.
Time is a demanding taskmaster. It seems to be biting at our heels, reminding us in a tyrannical way, to keep moving, or else. Or else, what? Might we be too late?
So, we try to get things done at the last minute or….
“By the skin of my teeth” – Check out the Biblical book of Job, ch.19/vs.20, where Job describes his plight as just barely holding on, with the only part of his body escaping affliction, his gums.
“At the nick of time” – In the 1580s, if you were “in the nick,” you were at “the critical moment” …or it’s too late.
“Eleventh hour,” described in Matthew 20:9, was when a few last-minute workers, hired long after the others, were paid the same wage. Despite being brought on the job after eleven hours of hard vineyard work, they weren’t too late.
“Zero hour” originated in 1945 at the capitulation of the Nazi government at midnight May 8th. It is also a military designation, meaning the scheduled time for the start of some event, or operation.
“Under the wire” or “down to the wire” is from late 19th century horse-racing, when a small wire was strung across the track, above the finish line, to help the judges determine which horse crossed the finish line first.
“High time” originated in the 13th century and it refers to the warmest time in the day. Since people of that era were mostly farmers, this time marked the turning point in the day when you must have either gotten so much work done on the land or you begin doing so immediately.
“Ship has sailed” comes from the mid-19th century. · It refers to the era when ships were largely powered by wind and you have arrived too late to catch it.
As to any of your unfinished business, what do you say we just follow the rule of Larry the Cable Guy, and “get er done.” If anybody dare ask you “when,” just answer, “in due time,” and hold onto your peace.