life's too short for that
I used to think "Life is too short" statements were poetically disguised versions of "I'm too lazy to care." As if we were using an excuse to not work hard or plan for the future or worry about how we treated people. Maybe I just heard too many sarcastic versions of it. Maybe I was just a snob. Because now I'm kind of obsessed with this concept.
Life is short. Life on this planet in this body is short. Now, I don't think it's too short to watch movies. Maybe because I don't care if I die after seeing a great chick flick as long as someone I love is with me. But I had to leave my last job because of this concept. I really respect the necessity for good hard work - I do. But I hated how many Saturday nights I went to sleep with dread that my work week would start the next day. Forty hours a week in a job for which I could no longer find meaning - that was too many, considering life is short.
There are several small things in life I don't stress over because life is too short. Usually the small things involving small children. Spills and broken pictures and too many toys getting dragged from the bedroom - life's too short to care more about the neatness of my living room than the not unpleasant reminder that little boys live here.
At one point I decided life was too short not to go for my dreams with all my heart. That's how my book is out in there in the publishing universe at all. But now I think life is too short to feel desperate about its ever getting published. Do you know how long this process can take? Six months to a year before anyone offers to buy it and a year or two after that before they actually get it on the shelves. Do you know how much can happen before then? Jesus could return. That's what I think about. So sometimes I just get giddy about the fact that an agent noticed me, and that she thinks the book is worthy of publication at all. Really, for that dream, I've already done it. I wrote an entire manuscript and got it out there in the universe.
I think these days I need to know that if I was told bad news again - if I had to face an early death - I need to know that I could come home from that doctor's office, sit quietly in my little home with my children and husband around me, and be perfectly satisfied. Terribly sad that it would end but without the regret that there was so much left to do.
Lest you think I'm trying to be too heavy here, I also think life is too short for ugly shoes. There was a Flair for Facebook that said that. And I wanted it, except the "too" was spelled wrong. Life is definitely too short to spell your slogan wrong.
What about you? What is life too short for, for you? I really want to know - funny and serious both. Kind of like a really good chick flick.