“I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important.
The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.
Now this, I think, represents a dilemma of modern man.”
— Dwight Eisenhower, former President of the United States
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I yelled at my daughter this morning – and when I say I yelled, I mean I really shouted, and for quite some time. Why? Because I was right. I was so right, and totally justified.
I was right because if she damaged my computer, it would cost a lot of time and money. I was right because she wasn’t listening, and I’d already told her 3 or 4 times not to. I was right for so many different reasons … yet I was wrong for all the important ones.
When I got present and calmed down, I saw how wrong I really was.
I got annoyed and angry because I was totally distracted, trying to read an article on my phone about some kettlebell training programme. Her messing around in another room wouldn’t let me escape into my absent minded escapist bubble.
How small and trivial is that?
Prioritising my phone and some petty knowledge which could wait over real life, the present moment which contained my daughter, someone more precious to me than anything else in the world?
Fascinating how quickly I forgot that.
What we’re talking about here is not about preventing damage, it’s not about not taking action. It’s the quality of the action that I value most; the level of skill we bring to life.
Being un-present meant I lost my shit. Even though I was right, being absent meant I reacted as a bully. I wouldn’t shout like that to another adult, but part of me figured I could get away with it with a little kid.
I’m not particularly big, but I’m certainly bigger and louder than a four year old. Dominance through force is not the kind of basis for any relationship I want to build.
Now it also all depends on what game we want to play.
We can play a shallow game of trivialities. Of urgent, small stuff. Or we can bring some urgency to what is truly important, as ex-US President Eisenhower famously put it – the vital things that truly give us meaning and sense and a much deeper quality of life.
Every single drama of our lives fades in significance when compared to what we truly value. These are the things that we remember – and yet they are the first things we forget. What is truly precious to us slips far too quickly.
But if you want more meaning, more beauty, more connection, more truth, more rightness, even magic and sacredness, actively and consistently put the deeper, permanent context of your life over the forever changing content.
They’re not mutually exclusive; it’s not either/or. It turns out that by putting the important before the urgent, you still manage to do everything you need to do, but to the best of your ability and skill and integrity, and with great satisfaction at a job done well.
Drama and stress doesn’t touch you. Not because they’re not there – life IS challenge – but because you’re actively putting them into perspective, they become smaller. Perhaps not irrelevant, but certainly not important.
So. That’s what I learnt this morning. How about you?
As always, go well.
Arjuna