Last night I sat in bed, laptop on my lap and my little 19 inch TV tuned into Monday Night Football (yes, that’s right, I don’t have a cool flat screen 1080 DLP 50 inch in my bedroom). It was about 8:45pm. I watched the Broncos-Chargers game until the final seconds. I checked my email, sent a few text messages, visited Facebook and read Google News. I did some writing too. It was a relaxing way to end the day (hopefully I’ll do a little more of the same tonight!).
Earlier in the day I wrapped up at the office at 4:30pm and quickly headed off to catch a train home. I wanted to see my kids. Throughout the day I thought about each of them – something unique from the past weekend. For example, for one it was the excitement of new presents from a birthday. For another it was a 5 year old child’s rendition of Top 40 song from the radio.
Unlike the very recent past, I was home by 6:15pm, I was in the kitchen as dinner was prepared, I ate dinner with my family, helped (ever so slightly) with the clean up and with getting the kids to bed (again, ever so slightly). Not bad (or at least not as bad as not being around at all)!
I am grateful to God for all of it. So, why am I thinking about all of this now?
Mainly, I am thinking about it because a lot of it is new. It has been a long time since I was last able to sit in bed at the end of the day and just relax. Eating dinner with my family every night is a new thing. Being home while dinner is being prepared was, heretofore, unheard of (actually preparing dinner may be asking a for too much) and having the luxury to daydream about my kids is a treat I haven’t indulged in for a very long time.
Why am I able to enjoy all of these new luxuries?
I recently changed jobs. My previous position in the nonprofit sector was a 24/7 gig with a lot of stress. I loved my work, but on balance it was time to move on. So move on I did and land a new gig. My new position has a more manageable schedule. Again, thank you God!
One thing I’ve noticed about the change is how protective I’ve become of my time. Before, it was a foregone conclusion that I’d have little time for recreation, for family and for sleep. Now, I find myself guarding these things zealously!
In just the past few weeks I’ve passed on many events and meetings involving everything from politics to interfaith relations to social services within the Muslim community. The next several weeks are filled with events as well. Will I attend any of them? I may but right now there are no guarantees.
It’s not that I do not care about the issues and topics being discussed and worked on in these meetings. I do care about most of them. However, going forward I want to be more thoughtful about my religious and civic engagement. Whatever I choose to become involved with cannot take away from my time from the things that matter most – my kids. That is one benchmark.
Another benchmark is that my volunteerism has to be more thoughtful. Because I value my time and have a much greater appreciation for its value, I want my volunteerism to be more constructive. I want it to be focused and I want it to be used to build something meaningful.
Over the last decade and a half I’ve been a serial volunteer without focus. I’ve volunteered in so many different endeavors but many of them are unrelated to one another. For example, back on New Year’s Day 2007 I got a call from someone at the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC). This person wanted me to come to the office that evening for “a very important dinner meeting of key community leaders to discuss strategies for increasing civic engagement by American Muslims.”
On that particular new year’s day I dropped the bowl games to head downtown for the meeting. Looking back, I know that meeting was called simply because the CIOGC had to fulfill a grant requirement by a date certain and they needed to have a quota of people who served on mosque or Muslim service organization boards! I was not invited to the meeting so much as I was invited to be meat (i.e., meeting filler). What a waste of time!
Appreciating the value of my time more now, I want to be sure that I spend my volunteer hours more wisely.
If the number of hours I have to volunteer are less plentiful now, then where do I want to spend them? I’m still working this out in my mind. I am leaning towards interreligious dialogue and interreligious advocacy and action for the common good. I’ll give my mosque a fair amount of time but beyond the mosque my commitments will be given sparingly.
I realize that I may be becoming the kind of person I recently held in contempt. I used to bristle when friends declined invitations to “important meetings” because of some social engagement or another.
I still think some of those meetings were important and some of the reasons for declining my invitations were lame (but I’m not naming names!). At the same time I also realize that many of my friends were probably not sold on why I wanted them to come out and spend their precious free time on one of these “important meetings.”
For now I will still go to “important meetings” from time to time even when I’m not planning on taking an active role in the effort or cause for which the “important meeting” is being convened. I know that sometimes (perhaps many times) I’m being invited as “meeting meat” and not as a “meeting participant” and that’s just fine! I’ll go, fill some space, maybe learn a bit and then leave guilt-free and obligation-free!
In the absence of a lot of extraneous obligations I will hang out with my kids, watch my two favorite football teams – the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Chicago Bears – and maybe read some interesting books and do a lot more writing!
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