Ah, summer, that time of year when we crave lazy days and instead try to have as much fun as possible in as short a time as can be managed, resulting in muddled sleeping and eating schedules, and therefore mildly crazed children and self. All our fun is making me pretty tired. It makes me think of a conversation I had with my sister, who has lost almost twenty pounds in the last six months because she keeps signing herself up to run 5K races every month. Talk about motivation! She now works out four days a week but if she pushes herself further than that, she is overtraining. Her body feels weak and sore, she starts hurting herself more easily, gets sick, and generally feels grouchy and irritable. Hmm, this all seems oddly familiar… I’m overtraining in parenthood!

            I strive for balance in all things. It is my mantra, my goal, my paradigm, but I have found that I have the bad habit of trying to achieve that balance by swinging wildly from the two extremes of working too hard to working too little. But the concept of working too little is something of an epiphany for me. We all work so hard, how is it possible to rest too much? I’ve discovered some cultural habits I’ve picked up: when I want to recharge, my top picks include an hour-long full body massage, toodling in front of the computer (writing my blog doesn’t count), or lounging by the pool with lemonade in one hand and a trashy novel in the other. When I’m resting, I’m going to rest, darn it! Give me comfort! Give me empty stretches of time where my brain and body are in total stasis! I deserve it!

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I am lucky- very lucky. I live in a comfortable middle class neighborhood, and am blessed to have food in my cupboards and a bit of money left over at the end of each week.  I have everything I NEED.  I try never to forget this.  Having my family’s needs met is a true blessing.  That said however, nothing in this world drives me so much as a want.  My parents, my mother in particular, imparted no piece of wisdom more strongly in me than this one.

It’s good to want things.Now, I raise my children in fairly alternative circles, we recycle, put a higher value on well made goods and so can afford fewer of them, and just generally  try to consume fewer resources than the American norm.  So this particular phrase may seem an odd thing to want to pass on to my own children, yet I find it very helpful.   After food, shelter, safety and love are in our lives, are we all walking around in blissful enlightenment?  I wish that were the case, and perhaps it should be.  But in the world I observe it seems that is not.So, as my mom would say, it’s good to want things.The key is how you look at the word want.  If all I meant for my children to take away from this phrase was that they should want more stuff, it would seem patently materialistic.  But the kind of want I’m talking about here is the stuff of goals, dreams and aspirations.   In a world where intention is everything, where you draw to you what you ask the universe for, having clear and strong wants is absolutely necessary.  If the word WANT has negative connotations for you, call them dreams, desires, goals – find a word that does work for you.