I’ve talked a lot about intention in this blog over the years, mostly trying to figure out how exactly it works. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the only time in my life when I felt like intention was really clear. It was back in college, when I’d meet my friends at the bar on a Friday night, and the intention was to have fun! So you’d had a crappy week, so your roommate was late with the rent again, so your boss docked your pay for no good reason, so the world was going to hell in a handbasket. Who cared! We commiserated with each other for a few minutes, and then said, “Screw it. Let’s have some fun.”
The whole point of those evenings was to blow off steam. It was to forget your troubles, to laugh, to dance, to sing along with the band. It didn’t mean the bad things were going to go away, it just meant that for one night, they didn’t get to be in charge.
Fast forward to a time in my life when most of my friends are dealing with serious problems with kids, aging parents, houses in need of repair, disillusionment and exhaustion with jobs they’ve done for years, concerns about finances and politics and health issues. Oh my God, so much to worry about. And I’m right there with them. This is serious stuff. It needs to be addressed. But we humans are not meant to carry such heavy burdens without once in a while setting them down and taking a rest.
