Most of our life is spent waiting for the next thing to happen. Your next vacation, the work waiting for you on Monday, that movie you’ll be watching on Saturday. Right down to the grocery run that’s next on your list of things to do this week.
By now, you’re surely nodding sagely. But what I offer you today is – what would your life look like if those in-between times were as exciting as everything else? The first step is recognizing when you find yourself in an in-between time. There are few questions I’ll ask myself
- Do I have no obligations to anything or anyone right now?
- Am I tempted to scroll through my phone mindlessly?
- Am I feeling bored?
- Do I feel like doing something else?
If you answered yes to 1 or more of these, chances are you’re in an in-between time. But it’s also important to remember that it’s mostly an intuitive feeling. You’ll probably know if you’re in an in-between time when it’s happening. Questions like these, more than anything else, are meant to prompt enough self reflection to bring you into the moment, rather than let your mind wander the way it tends to do.
Okay, so you know you’re in an in-between time. You’re driving to your parents’ house or you’re in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. Or any other of the million places that in-between time creeps up on you.
What next? In this great post, Sinéad Cullen talks about the idea of rewilding our imaginations. She describes the idea a lot more effectively than I could, but the general idea is to foster the imaginative abilities we all possessed as children. I highly suggest checking that out before anything else.
Along the same vein of Sinéad’s idea, I propose rewilding our curiosity. As an engineer, curiosity is almost as valuable as our hard skills. Cultivating curiosity is worthwhile in and of itself. But applied to the world around us, it opens up perspectives that we may otherwise have never experienced. You may have done that drive home thousands of times. But have you ever taken that longer route before? Have you ever been curious about what that corner store sells? In my experience the more you feed your curiosity, the more it grows.
Ultimately, making the most of any moment in time often means being present. But that can mean a lot of things to different people. Both curiosity and imagination can be valuable tools to engage with the world around us. My hope is that you (and myself) can use them to find our way to being more present with the world and people around us.
Scripted Journal 