When I moved into my house last year, I got new living room furniture.
My new set of furniture has electric controls that power the recline options.
I'd never owned furniture that needed to be plugged in.
I felt pretty fancy putting them in my living room.
The drawback to this type of control, besides the cords running from the furniture to the electrical outlets, is the fact that it takes a bit more time to recline and to close when you get up.
My teenage boys, who are so used to a world filled with instant gratification, seem to think that waiting for the recliner to close is too big of a hardship for them.
Because of this, many mornings when I wake up, I am greeted by an open recliner.
I think about how odd it is for them to get up from the chair while it's fully reclined, having to stretch their legs over and get up in such an awkward way.
All to avoid the few extra seconds it takes for the electrical controls to close up the chair.
It makes me laugh.
But it also makes me wonder.
How have we come to a time where we can't even wait a few seconds to put things back in their proper place?
Why are we so impatient that we're willing to leave our world in a state of disarray rather than restore order?
In a world so full of stimulation and millions of options, we're losing our ability to slow down.
We're getting up out of our proverbial chairs so fast that we are leaving them perpetually reclined. And that worries me.
If we continue to not let ourselves relax and reflect, I'm afraid that there will come a time when our world is so tightly wound that we'll completely forget how to just BE.
This time that I have been off of work has taught me a few things. Not the least of which is that my brain doesn't have to be running a thousand miles a minute.
Things like:
It's okay to relax and breathe
It's okay to take a few minutes to just sit and do nothing
It's okay to say no to something we don't want to do
It's okay to take the time to truly get to know ourselves and who we want to be
And it's okay to sit in the chair for a few extra seconds and wait for it to close before getting out of it.
Now if I could only teach my boys this lesson!
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