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Putting on the oxygen mask…
My friend Mary used an analogy that she’d heard recently in our conversation the other day. She said “on an airplane if something happens, you have to put your oxygen mask on first, even before helping children or those that are disabled around you. If you don’t put on your mask, you may be able to get the other person’s on, but then you can’t help them beyond that because you haven’t saved yourself.” She was using this illustrating about our lives.
Too often we get caught up in “life” - trying to do it all, be it all, help everyone, and more. On Sunday, Jon Tyson spoke about how we can try and try and try, but we will never ever be able to keep up with the cultural standards that have been placed on a “perfect life.” What we see is unachievable. And if we achieve any part of it, we’ve just barely scratched the surface. We continually feel like we’re paddling and paddling but only slightly keeping our heads above water.
For many of us (yes, me), we overfill our lives. We want to share every experience we have with people, so we have lots of friendships, but so few are very deep. We fill our time with things that aren’t our passions or don’t fulfill us. Now, I’m not saying we should only fill our time with super special, meaningful things. That’s not realistic. But we have a lot of “half-way” friendships, a lot of “half-way” experiences because we’re only half-way engaged. We’ve spread ourselves too thin and are exhausted trying to keep up. Jon asked, “what if we stopped trying to be friends with everyone and stopped trying to do it all?”
What if we throw ourselves into what matters most - friendships that are real and honest, thinking of work as more than just a job but a place of purposeful work (no matter the field you work in), seeing your time as valuable, not stressing over what’s next, and really taking the time you need for you?
The point of the oxygen mask is that we have to take care of ourselves before we can really be present anywhere else. If we’re a mess - emotionally, physically, spiritually - and we’re always feeling scattered about our lives, we can’t fully give to anything. We need to take time for us, to do the things we love, and to really contemplate and mediate on what matters to us, what we want out of our lives, where we want to spend our time, etc.
That is what I’m pondering in this new year: how to put on my oxygen mask first in order to make this a year of purpose and joy - not of chaos and chasing things that I can actually never really get.
Plus, I think we’ll have a lot more fun when we’re actually enjoying it.
