Wednesday, April 28, 2010

You Have the Watch but I Have Time

This year I started giving motivational speeches. The speech was about having the courage to stand up for your dream. I drew parallels to my experience in Africa. It brought back a lot of memories so I decided to dig up a video clip of my interview with an American Catholic missionary in Tanzania. Father Joseph has lived in Africa for over 30 years and has amazing insight about African culture, proverbs and philosophy. During the interview, he made reference to a saying in Tanzania that “The Westerners have the watch but Africans have time.“ I thought that is a great way to introduce this article.

Do you have the watch but no time? Do you have presence but no life? Many of us are pack rats in our lives – wanting to have everything and having a hard time making choices about what is important and what should be ‘dropped’.

What would it be like if we could choose to be happy?

I quit a good-paying job a few years ago to focus on volunteer work in developing countries. When I shared my stories, I sometimes got comments like “Oh, I wish I were as lucky as you.”, or “Oh, I wish I could afford the same kind of choice you made.” I found it ironic because most of the time the comments were from people who owned nice homes and had great jobs. I had no doubt that they could “afford” the same choice I made. They just had a hard time making that choice.

I often think of a life as filled with anything we can hold or embrace with our arms. There is a limit to how much we can hold. If you want something that is not already in your arms, sometimes you have to first give up something you have in order to have capacity for the new thing. In coaching, I see how clients let go of fear so they can make room for courage. They let go of present to welcome the future.

Sometimes the things in our embrace are so full and piled up in front of us that all we can see is what other people next to us have in their arms. And we forget how good the things we already have in our arms are.

So maybe life is like an on-going barter process. We drop something old with one arm and grab on something new with another arm. After a while something new becomes something old and no longer fits. Make your barter decisions based on your future, not where you are now.

Don’t be afraid to trade up or trade down. You gain some and you lose some. Sometimes we make good choices. Sometimes we make bad choices. But we know that there will always be more opportunities for further bartering in life. Relish the moment while it is in your arms as the wise man said, “Being successful is having what you want. Being happy is wanting what you have.”