Sweating the big stuff

~ Nov. 17, 2005

Dear Leslie,

Vacations are a necessity, not a luxury. A week alone on the Gulf Coast taught me that.

It had been almost a year since DC and I went to Orlando to see Mickey. I was starting to feel like a wind-up toy wound too tight.

DC kept putting off taking a vacation. She had lots of reasons, but the real reasons she won't take a vacation walk on all fours. She doesn't want to leave the dogs in a kennel for a week, especially not our beagle Alvie, whose life depends on him receiving regular doses of pharmaceuticals. She's afraid he'll die alone in a kennel while we're off having fun.

So, accompanied by five books, 14 golf clubs and a Jayhawks CD, off I went to the Gulf Coast, planning to do nothing but whatever I felt like doing and to think about nothing but whatever I felt like thinking about.

Friends gave me a bon voyage gift. It consisted of a bag of golf balls, a bag of pebbles, a bag of sand, a jar, a bottle of beer and an envelope. They made me promise to open the envelope on reaching my destination. On arriving at the Gulf Breezes Motel on Dauphin Island, I went along.

The instructions were to put the golf balls in the jar first, add the pebbles and shake the jar, add the sand and shake the jar, then pour in the beer. But this wasn't a gag gift.

The golf balls represented life's essentials: health, your spouse, family and friends, God, whatever you're passionate about. The pebbles were the other things that matter, like your job and your house. The sand represented everything else in your life -- the small stuff.

I put in the golf balls, then added the pebbles. It looked like nothing else could fit. Seeing the pebbles fill in the crevices between the golf balls when the jar was shaken made me smile. But after adding the sand, impatience made me forget to shake the jar. The beer spilled out of the jar when I tried to pour it in as instructed.

I stopped pouring and took a deep breath. What had happened perfectly illustrated my recent state of mind.

We all know this lesson but forget it from time to time. The essentials of life have to come first. Put the pebbles or the sand in first and all the golf balls won't fit. Life is good and full without any of the rest. Often the rest gets in the way of your real life.

Over the next week, I mainly just hung out with myself and my friends' lesson. I didn't play golf (OK, one visit to a driving range once). I read a book about believing you can do the impossible and started another about deepening your relationships.

I decided to take better care of my health and my relationships, to always have time for a beer with friends, to always make time to do nothing at all.

Anxious at the end to get home to DC and the furry ones, I drove north all day and long into the night, singing along with the Jayhawks. "Stumbling through the dark/Seems I'm stumbling through the dark/Everybody's stumbling through the dark."

Love, Sam

~ Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.