Who knows that experiences have their time („the right but also at the right time“) can wait or seize the day. It is about sensing the kairos. When “the time had fully come”, as the bible says, the changing things happened, as the birth of Jesus.
We can tackle things too early or too late.“Leaving” tasks for their time doesn’t mean to “wait them out” until they have become moot, as some politicians are accused of, but to see when the circumstances, other tasks, other people are ready.
We also have to respect that individual experiences have their own inner time (how much time they take), thus, have to know the right time to leave or to stay, e.g. on a birthday party. Who has not yet listened to a speech that was too long or too short, finished too soon, having nothing to do with the time it took?
This all, to perceive the inner time and the kairos, is not an easy task, especially in our culture where everybody always has a watch and relies more on it than on life itself. Another art, art of life.
The time with those processes is not an enemy forcing us or running away. To really feel their pulse, that’s what it is about. Let them surprise you.
In doing so, the art of life becomes an „art of improvisation“.
“For improvisation is the art of being able to engage with the unexpected (im-pro-videre) and to form it in the flow of events…” (Schroeter-Wittke, in Bubmann / Sill, p. 114)
Things never go the way as expected. Never, even if it’s only a small deviation from the expected or imagined, the planned. However, I do not want to ignore these deviations, as small or big as they may be, but absorb them.
Life offers opportunities to form it, it is not only reaction.
This creates insecurities, connected with risks.
Do I allow the insecurities and risks of failing, of committing mistakes to paralyse or to challenge me?
Mistakes and failures are places to learn, not a shame. (Of course, it is not a matter of becoming a gambler living at the expense of others, but being willing to assume responsibility, before and after. It is possible to love responsibility.)
Improvisation does not have anything against plans, on the contrary.
Planning in the sense of concepts – and not of determinations to which you have to adhere at all costs – gives orientation, creates security for changes and protects against having your life planned (by others) or straying through the chaos without any plan and is also an expression of responsible life.
What can this mean in practical terms?
- Plan! Plan your day, your week, your year. Allocate time for planning, daily, weekly, annually. Make plans, but don’t plan everything. Give the day, the week, the year free time during which life can breathe with its events, breathe deeply, and gets some time.
We are not controlled by time but want to cooperate with it.
- Plan everything. Everything is worth being formed by planning. But do not always plan everything, otherwise you are constantly busy with planning.
- The break! Do you know breaks? Without the right and the freedom to pause, it is not possible. (apart from exceptions) Breaks are for relaxing, for positioning yourself within your concepts, times of creative pregnancy for improvisation solutions. Breaks are bows to God, confessions that nonstop being cannot eliminate our human restrictions and that our achievements always imply the aspect of receiving a present.
“For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep”, it says in the Old Testament. That also means, allow yourself some sleep.
- Learn to wait. Only do half (what, unfortunately, most of the times is not possible but means: “Don’t let your work dictate you”). Trust in God with the other half and also with yours. Shouldn’t you maybe take in less information and give less of what you are producing? Sometimes less is really more.
- “Allow yourself time to drift”. Art of life is not a supporter of being lazy, of idleness. No, but of leisure. There may always be hours or even days that are not planned. It is necessary to drift. Allow yourself to drift with the inner time of things, pause in them until they are finished. And then continue drifting.
- Time to drift: To do what seems worth doing in this very moment
...until it is finished or I don’t feel like doing it anymore
…without thinking about the next thing or imagining it
…then again: to do what seems worth doing in this very moment
…with a clear conscience and with love.
To love planning – and changing plans in the same way! Relying upon a Higher whose thoughts are a thousand times higher. I willingly agree to plan but God guides the steps.
Lived art of life exercise:
- During one month, take half an hour on each Sunday night to get an overview of the next week. What will and shall be the most important in the next week? Do I have sufficient time for it? Each time, plan something valuable for you that had not been scheduled and realize it.
- Note down all arguments you have against a regular daily planning. Are they correct?
“I found out that I could add almost two hours to my workday if I went to bed for one hour after lunch.”
Winston Churchill (1874-1965), important British statesman and winner of the Nobel prize for literature
“To plan things is the task of men, to complete things: task of heaven.” Chinese Proverb
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