The Essential And The Urgent

I spoke last week to a local United Methodist Women's group, an engagement that had been scheduled in late 2018 and, through a series of calendar complications, mostly of my own making, got moved more than once. It had been scheduled long enough that, in preparation for my talk, I scanned the most recent church newsletter to see if there was any note about the evening.

There was not. But in the minister's message, which I just happened to glance at, I found such a nugget that I have been walking around quoting it (usually badly paraphrasing it) ever since.

The minister had taken time away from the pulpit in August. In the September newsletter, he reflected on what he had learned during his renewal leave. His second observation caused me to stop reading:

It's easy for the essential to be crowded out by the urgent. 

I read that again, then said it out loud.

It's easy for the essential to be crowded out by the urgent. 

Holy moly. If that isn't my life, then I don't know what is. When I look back on my posts, my conversations with colleagues and friends and my dear husband, my letters, my thoughts (day or night, a day just starting or a day half over, or a day spent and gone), an overwhelming portion of my thoughts and sentences are spent on the urgent (or what I perceive to be "urgent") and on complaining (internally or externally) about how I never have enough time to get to the essential. My writing comes to mind immediately. Even when I have in mind a brief post or have sketched out some thoughts for one (or for my column or for a poem), I too easily shelve it in the urgency of the moment. ("How can I take time to write now? There's [name it] that needs done.")

And when I talk about the "urgent," I am not referring to the daily routine. Yes, the laundry needs done. Yes, the meal needs prepared. Tasks are tasks. I am talking about the white noise: the everything else that I frantically grab at and tend to all the time. All. The. Time.

So this sentence grabbed me and shook me.

It's easy for the essential to be crowded out by the urgent. 

It is still shaking me. April, it shouts, what are you doing? You are throwing away the essential to do the urgent.  STOP IT.

As I noted, I read that sentence last week. I have been handing it out like business cards ever since. I met a new friend for coffee in one of our local shops this Thursday past. Standing at the counter, I chatted with the proprietor about how her week was going. She made the typical comment about how busy things were, how hectic things were. I started to agree, then remembered my sentence and pulled it out, clumsily paraphrasing it.

Shelley stopped immediately. "Oh, I like that! How true!"

How true, indeed.

I do a poor job of not letting the urgent crowd out the essential. I know that about myself. That is why my study is a mess, why my writing is in piles here and there (some literal piles, some figurative piles), why I always seem to be busy. Coming off of the High Holy Days, during which I indeed let the urgent (the tasks and demands of the day) crowd out the essential (the spiritual significance and self-reflection required), I am telling myself that, in this year that has just started, I need to make an effort to live more essentially and less urgently.

Need to make? Have to make.

It's easy for the essential to be crowded out by the urgent. 

Let's see where this takes me.