A group of intelligent, middle-aged men with the capacity to make everything right – in this particular instance – failed to treat themselves and others with human kindness: they failed or rather will fail to do that which will solve their problem.  The problem?  They don’t have enough time to get together as often as they desire.  “We’re all too busy,” one person said.  Whether it was children, career, school or distance they were right … they were just too busy or too far apart to get together as often as they would like.  They could feel old friendships breaking down, perhaps not this immediate group, but surely in the larger one … the part of the group not in attendance.

Now we’ve discussed before, in these pages, that the number one reason we are here, is for one another … and yet we fail our mission of ‘togetherness’ – which is a key component of human kindness (to self and others) regularly.  It struck me that all of us were complaining about the same thing and that all of us had the same capacity to solve the problem and that none of us were about to go and change a blessed thing.

First let’s take a look at the immediate problem.  Everyone was going to go back to their busy lives and none were going to make each other a priority.  This is not a mean-spirited sentiment, but is based on research.  We get caught up in the day-to-day conundrums of living life where our friends are out of sight for a few minutes and suddenly taking out the garbage takes on increasing importance.  A study believed it would prove the following: that when it came to important tasks, we would do that which was most important in all cases.

So a number one would be rushing a loved one to hospital in case of an emergency.  A number two would be taking time to plan get-togethers with friends.  A number three would be pulling the clothes in off the line before it rained (it will dry again … after the rain) and a number four would be, say, taking out the garbage.  But the study found something altogether unexpected. 

We tend to do that which is most urgent rather than what is most important.  Still, we rush our loved ones to hospital: we get that one right.  But then we run out to get the clothes and hussle to walk the dog and … and … and … however long the list is to get done, we pick them off from the most to the least urgent.  Surprisingly, then, you would think that we would make most important, least urgent number three, but we usually find resistance at this juncture.  It’s the wrong time to call our friends when we think about it (it’s supper time and instead of writing it down to remind ourselves to do so later, we forget and three days go by before we think of it again … but then it’s after 10 and we still cannot call).  And then, later we get together for something else and we say, “You know I’ve been meaning to call you for three weeks now …”  So, we put off doing these things and we do the least important, least urgent thing and … we take out the garbage rather than calling our friends.  Our lives are leading us, rather than us leading our lives.

Each day a chance to contact someone slips by is another day we’ve placed what should be a number four on our list of priorities ahead of our number two priority: that of contacting a friend.  We’d rather take out the garbage than engage in an activity we all say we want to do: get together more often.  And I am only slightly further along than my friends: I recognize the problem … and then I go and take out the garbage.  It’s an improvement, but it still doesn’t get the job done.  However, writing about it to point this fact out to you and reinforcing this notion inside of myself … at least that’s a gain!

What is the cause of all this human unkindness to self and others?  I remember reading an introduction to an undergrad philosophy textbook that said philosophy and religion are two disciplines that seek to make the human condition a better one.  Some might think that getting 90’s in philosophy exams is the key point in that scholastic discipline, but I say it’s not: I say it is the power to teach us to ‘think’.  I believe we simply let the immediacy of life take us along a shallow flowing river of getting things done … doing busy “so-called urgent” things … rather than important things.  We’re made that way.  Our brains are a sieve leading us to lives on a slippery slope of our own discontent.  We have the retention span of a gnat when it comes to remembering the important things in life over the many trips we will make to the garbage instead.  That group of friends all said we’d like to get together more … that we’re all too busy … and we won’t do a damn thing to change our lives when we all have the power to make a difference.

Look at our society.  We ogle the rich and famous.  We all want to be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet in whatever skill or business we desire to excel at and what do we do?  At night we sit in front of television sets … exhausted from jobs we don’t like and we think we are recharging ourselves by watching other people for four hours on average each day live their lives in “Unreality Television Shows”, sitcoms and cop dramas that have about as much chance of being like real police work as I have a chance of going to the moon and in the process we are failing to live our own lives.  And when we fail to do that, we are unkind to ourselves and to others.

We are a people of stories.  We all talk of how much we want to be together, yet we do nothing to achieve our goals.  Either we want to get together and we’re misdirected or we really don’t give a damn about our friends we don’t see often enough and we just like to tell them stories about getting together.  Stories have the ability to let us off the hook from our responsibilities.

A large part of the problem is our distinct lack of vision.  We fail to see that a few minutes work towards our goals will take us down the road.  When we see a goal the size of an elephant (real or imagined – for I do not think calling our friends is a big elephant) we tend to think we need huge blocks of time to strive towards it.  Make no mistake, huge blocks of time spent heading towards a goal does make a significant impact.  But the problem is we don’t often find those huge blocks of time.  So we’re left with the bits and pieces of time that are left-over from our exhaustive days and we attempt to cram time towards a big goal.  Just thinking of starting to head towards that goal takes more time than the little bits and pieces we leave for it.  And so … we pass them by, doing something else that at least gives us some kind of feedback: we take out the garbage and now the kitchen doesn’t smell quite so bad.  And we go to bed unrequited, unsatisfied for another day.

And another day becomes another and another until weeks and months and years go by and we wonder what we’ve done with our lives … where did that dream go to die: or in this case, we wonder why we NEVER see our friends anymore.

One thing philosophy IS good for is that it helps me to think: to be ON a little more than I used to be.  I see things like this a little more clearly than I used to.  And upon that I can bring to bear some of the things I have learned in my quest to become a better person and a better business person.

So, the solution as to how to do those big things that you cannot find time to do?  Make them a priority.  Some companies and individuals take the first half hour of every day and refuse to answer those ‘urgent’ phone calls.  They work on the big projects a little bit, as a priority, at the beginning of each day.  They have found that truly urgent phone calls aren’t often always that urgent … that the content of the message can be dealt with in 30 minutes.  (True emergencies, like rushing people to the hospital are still done!)  The problem with the phone, and now, even worse, with the internet email account is that it draws us away from our ‘power-thinking’ mode and it takes us 15 minutes, on average, to get back to the same level of thinking as we were in before the so-called ‘urgent’ interruption.

Remember too that a goal or a dream the size of an elephant is eaten one bite at a time.  That means that a little bit of work towards the problem will get the job done.  The fear that it is too big and that a single bite is meaningless is what holds us back from starting at all.  Heroes, and in this subject we all have the ability to be heroes in accomplishing big goals, know that big goals are done in minor increments.  They look big when you start, but one day, a big goal will be only a single bite away from completion.  And when you are done, people will look at you as though you are magical and ask, “How on earth did you ever find time to do all that work. I am proud of you.  I am amazed and astounded.”  And they probably will not hear the answer that you took a little bit of priority time every day to work on that big dream.  Big dreams are funny.  In the future, they look massive.  Once accomplished and you look back at them, they don’t seem that big at all.  It’s this problem we must overcome.