Oh, Allison, you crack me up to pieces! If this dumb blog let me reply to other people's blogs, I would comment on yours and make you feel famous for a second.
A week ago I might have said that Boyce is full of it when he talks about becoming to attached to your work. After all, the more attached you are to your work, the better the product of your labor; right? Well, maybe so to a point of diminishing returns. But that's not the point.
A few days ago, I made a flying, twelve-hour trip (10 diving, 2 visiting) with my husband and kids to Springfield, which I have been putting off because I don't have time. I am a very important person with no extra time. My dad is sick and has been in the hospital for thee weeks. I have been receiving frequent updates from my hillbilly (it's not a pejorative if it's true)relatives in the Ozarks on his welfare and his care. The visit could no longer be put off.
Lost-story-short, it appears Daddy is going to take the train to Glory fairly soon. His overarching goal at this point is to convince the doctor to allow him to board the train from the farm "surrounded by his great-grand kids, where he belongs" rather than from a 10 by 10 foot hospital room, where his beloved wife of 55 years sleeps on a narrow cot in a sad, little corner.
Now bear in mind, my dad is good-natured, funny, always full of silliness, and avoids seriousness at all cost. From his hospital bed, Daddy made a point of cutting the crap and telling me to quit working my life away, to slow down, and that someday I would regret the things I didn't do with my kids.
As I read Boyce's words suggesting that we fail to pause because our "preparedness or teaching seem too brilliant to interrupt" I thought of what I was actually thinking when my dad told me to stop working so hard. My work is so important, so wonderful, surely my life will wait. Trouble with that mindset is that you might never get back to living.
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