2009-08-03

See ya

If you read blogs, you probably know about using a Feed Reader. You can subscribe to a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed from your favorite blogs. Then you can read them all from your Feed Reader, without all that hassle of entering URLs from all those blogs. Very handy actually. Two free readers are www.bloglines.com and www.google.com/reader.

Recently, I had just over 100 feeds in my reader. But some of them I just wasn't reading anymore. In some cases the blog had changed during it's life. Maybe the author had changed jobs and was now talking about something else that didn't interest me. In some cases, I had changed and just didn't care what the author the blog was talking about anymore. So these blogs were just cluttering up my Feed Reader with stuff I didn't care about anymore.

The easy thing would seem to be to unsubscribe and just quit reading those blogs. But somehow it seemed a bit harder than that. It was kind of like I was turning away from a friend or something. No, that's not quite accurate. Maybe it's more like was saying "I'm better than you and your blog is not worthy of me to read anymore." Hmmm, that's not really it either. It's kind of hard to describe. But it was weird.

Eventually, I did pull the trigger and drop several unread blogs. Some how I feel better because I got rid of some dead weight from my reader. My 'guilt' is gone. My feed reader is lighter. And now I'm thinking about getting rid of a couple of more.

It's weird how we become attached to something or to a routine. There's real truth in the old saying that we are creatures of habit. Changing our habits causes stress. While in this case it was fairly minor stress, other changes in our habits might have more severe results. I think this is part of what makes addictions hard to kick (certainly there are other factors too). This can also be what makes it hard for some folks to make a change in their life and take steps to improve. Whether that is healthier habits, mending a broken relationship, or even making a stand for God.

Are you allowing a routine to stop you from doing something that you REALLY need to do? That's worth pondering about.

1 comment:

John Elder, MFT said...

Routines and habits are ways of letting your mind focus on what's really important while you do other things on autopilot. This can be good, when the autopilot is headed in the right direction, and not so good otherwise.

By the way, my solution to your dilemma was to not use my feed reader at all!!! All my feeds looked as if I should be reading them — I just didn't have the time to read them all.

One of those important life skills is saying "no" to good things. The price of being mortal and finite is not being able to do everything.

My failure to say "NO" to good and desirable things causes me to live with a default "NO" to other things (read the entire Harry Potter with this in mind).

In order to live the life I want to live, I must learn to say no to good and attractive things that dilute my time and focus from those things of most value to me.

I believe that this is one of the roots of humility, living in the acknowledgment that I am finite, that I cannot do everything. When I live with this in consciousness, I must treasure the experiences I do have.

And then my soul sings out with gratitude to the One who Is Infinite, the one who doesn't have to say "NO" to good and desirable things.

Thus each moment with its choosings becomes a prompt to remember my self as the child of a Loving Creator, as finite held in the arms of the infinite, of discovering joy and gratitude in each moment.

For what I have in this moment was bought at the price of all that I do not have in this moment. And beyond that, all that I have in this moment was bought at a price too infinite to comprehend.