Productivity// Losing and Finding Time

Things have shifted.

Externally, here.

My child & I spend mornings apart now, since she began school last week.

I know this is good for her.

It is good for her.

She shares her light with her own new world.

I know this is good for me.

It is good for me.

I am able to accomplish things.

But.

I am able to accomplish things.

Wednesday morning after I hugged her goodbye, I scurried to the community radio station where I volunteer in the newsroom.

Ordinarily my daughter comes with me, and I end up spending a portion of time there attending to her needs, talking about what’s what, sharing food with her, etc.; parenting. Without her, I simply did my work. And I left only when my work was done and I was ready to move on.

So I went to the bookstore, bank and grocery store: mindful that each of these errands with my child would have sufficed as the sole, singular outing of a day. All of this in 4 hours.

During this week, I have gotten so much done in those short periods of time alone: I’ve worked, taught, cleaned, organized, done, sat in meditation.

And that’s great.

And yet I wonder what I missed, getting things done.

When we are together, life moves slower. I have more time, it seems, though I accomplish less in the traditional sense.

My work now, is integrating what I have practiced breathing every breath with my child into a world where I will not always have her at my side to support a slower pace.

And as usual, I suspect that awareness is the key to this.

And that is a practice I know well and know that begins again and again. With every breath.

I’m drawn back to one of my favorite passages from the Yoga Sutras:

abhyasa vairagya abhyam tan nirodhah

Stillness follows practice (for many moons) without attachment to the result.

YS I:12

And so practice on, I will.

LOVE.