You have 45 minutes for lunch.
You grab McDonald’s because you have to call your significant other, touch base with a buddy about racquet ball later, put a call in about the tickets, and try to swing by the dry cleaners.
Add in a quick stop for some gas.
Check your tweet stream, your facebook stream, buy that ebook you wanted.
You gulp down lunch while heading back to work.
Back at your desk it hits you:
Guilt.
And then the thought comes:
“Why did I choose McDonald’s?”
And then it sits with you longer than the full stomach: regret.
What to do?
You can’t relive that 45 minutes.
You made the choices you made.
Is dealing with guilt the inevitable verdict?
I’m gonna throw you one better: what if it’s not about the food choice you made?
What if it’s not about coming up with your lunch plans for the rest of the month so you never choose McDonald’s again?
In fact, total from my own experience core conviction?
It’s not about the food.
It’s about the how we use our moments, our motives, that causes or dissuades the guilt.
What do I mean?
Preparation, planning, striving for order and a semblance of stability throughout our day?
A much more inspired disposition than a quick fix, convenience attitude that reels into the quickest drive through just to check off “get lunch” from the to do list.
Our innermost yearning doesn’t want convenience.
We actually hunger for stability and safe.
Convenience gives us neither.
Quick drive through’s rob us of natural ebb and flow of equal communication.
Take outs and Get it your way have lured us with their fast rewards and supposed desired outcomes.
But no one really ever checked in with our hearts after years of living those ways to see that quick fixxes never truly satisfy the hungering heart’s yearning for stability and calm.
Keeping this simple:
Love for Love itself and love for ourselves invites us to create satisfying ways to meet our desired goals of connection, stability and calm.
If we bring a lunch, we could conceivably eat it in the lunch room and connect with a fellow worker.
If we must do a fast food place, minimally we could get out of the car and place our order and maximize those moments of human connection.
If we must eat on the run we could find a park to stop at or sit still while eating. Minimally stop the eating while driving.
Our hearts yearn for stillness.
In the now that is constant on and fast, we owe it to ourselves wherever and however possible to allow stability which is what we hunger for most.
We dont have to mentally race.
We dont get anywhere faster but forcing it.
We dont accomplish more by me first mentality.
And we dont have to suffer guilt another hour.
We can create choices that honor our lives by carving out simple ways for connection, stability, stillness, and value.
It’s not about the food.
It’s about the motive and the process.
Lift it up.
You’re worth it.
Here’s to your thought by thought…
Tre ~
“What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love and good deeds.” ~ Mary Baker Eddy