Working Easy

Barbara: You know that Deb and I have often attributed the success of our relationships to the fact that we don’t take anything for granted and that, despite our loving bonds, we recognize that we have to work hard to keep those relationships growing and stimulated and close.

But what if you also have to remember to “work easy”??? I ask the question, but I know for a fact that we both do that too. Working easy is about letting a beloved’s intertwined life flow around yours and them letting your life flow around theirs. Working easy is about setting aside your expectations of a beloved’s actions and just letting them be. Working easy is not about solving problems, but about listening to them. It adds the “un” to “conditional”. It reminds you that life doesn’t always have to be tackled at a breakneck, list-checking pace (which you know from our recent posts we sometimes forget). It allows everyone involved a time-out to breathe and re-group.

We were so lazy, we forgot to take pics, so here's one I love from last year.

My younger daughter (who’s been away for university) came home for the weekend. It’s been bliss! And we didn’t race around and try to do a million things since this is her one precious weekend home, desperately hoping to make up for all the things she might have missed here (although there was a very little bit of that … because we had to). No, we talked for hours in our pajamas, sipping our favourite tea from favourite mugs. We slept in. We read. We watched movies at home. We had a couple of nice meals out to lessen the mundane load of grocery shopping and cleaning up after. We relaxed… We “worked easy” at reminding ourselves and each other that this is a sweet road to familial love and affection.

Two of my favourite topics that we wrote about are when we shared our marriage stories with you (Deb And Barbara Have A 4-Way) and parenting our now-grown children (What Kind Of Mother Am I?!). I think both of these life-stories succeed thanks as much to easy work as hard. We can get so wrapped up in all the things we HAVE to do for our families (chauffeuring, cooking, cleaning, organizing, orchestrating) and even for ourselves (appointments, schedules, deadlines, dream-weaving, chasing, challenging) that we forget that so much of the best contact and experience comes through easiness. Through letting down our strict agendas that will surely take us toward success and worthiness and personal glory, and sitting back instead and allowing things to come to us in their own lazy, loving ways, no expectations, no rules, no panic of failure.

I know this has been a theme in many of my posts lately. Blame it on a common theme in my life right now. And credit it to the fact that I am trying to listen to my life lessons. And blame it on the fact that, as our daily readers, you have to go on our journeys of self-discovery with us (whether you like to or not!). And credit it to the fact that both Deb and I love to share this stuff with you.

I know that I will still and always have to work hard at lots if not most things in my life. But I want to remember this mantra of “working easy”. I want to pull it out whenever I get overwhelmed or confused. I want to bring it to my creative work—where working easy will always give me my best and truest work. I want to see where working easy—being easy—will take me.

Deb: Working easy! Another phrase I am adding to the arsenal of living. It’s a wonderful concept and easy to adopt. In the world of symmetry (Quantum Physics, anyone?) we had almost a mirror weekend in our home a few weeks ago. The boy, like Barb’s girl, just felt the need for home, to reconnect, to just be in the bosom of family. Colin was away for part of it, but we structured the time so that the boy would have time with both of us. And that is all we structured. We worked it easy and I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW IT! We did as Barb said: relaxed, watched shows together, played on the floor with the dogs and laughed. We ate in however, but we ordered so that it would be relaxing. The yin yang of family worked its magic and it reminded us all why we are the easiest of friends, we three.