I keep noticing how easy it is for a week to disappear when nobody decides anything.
Not bad decisions.
No decisions.
You come home the same way. Dinner happens. You watch something. Before you know it, it’s time for bed.
Saturday shows up, and somehow it becomes groceries, laundry, errands, and catching up around the house.
None of that is bad.
It’s just what happens when nobody decides otherwise.
A few months later, it’s hard to remember what you actually did. The weeks weren’t terrible. They just blended together.
What Living by Default Actually Looks Like
Last week I caught myself walking the dogs while mentally planning tomorrow. Work. The house. Everything that still needed to get done.
When we got back home, I realized I couldn’t have told you much about the walk. I don’t remember what the dogs stopped to sniff. I don’t remember who we passed. I was outside the whole time. My mind wasn’t.
That made me realize something.
The same thing happens to entire weeks.
We move through them thinking about what’s next. Before we notice, this week has become last week.
I don’t think most people are living badly. I think we’re living by default.
The default isn’t obvious. It’s another Saturday spent working through the endless to-do list because nobody asked if there was room for anything else. It’s saying “we should get together sometime” until six months have gone by. It’s another beautiful evening spent inside because it’s easier than deciding to go somewhere.
Nothing went wrong. Life just kept moving.
Lately, Tom and I have been asking a different question at the beginning of the week.
What can we do this week that we’ll actually remember?
Sometimes the answer is dinner with friends. Sometimes it’s mini golf with Sam. Sometimes it’s coffee outside after work or a Cardinals game on a Wednesday night.
The point isn’t to make every week extraordinary. It’s to make sure the week isn’t remembered only for everything that had to get done.
The Opposite of Autopilot
The more I notice it, the more I think the opposite of autopilot isn’t productivity.
It isn’t being busy. It isn’t even awareness.
It’s deciding.
Deciding this week is going to include dinner with friends. Deciding to sit on the patio for twenty minutes because it’s finally cool outside. Deciding to text someone before another month slips by.
Maybe that’s what presence is. Not a perfectly quiet morning. Not an empty calendar. Not waiting for life to slow down.
Just deciding to participate in the life that’s already happening.
Because the weeks we remember are rarely the ones that happened to us. They’re the ones we chose.
I’ll forget sometimes. The default is patient. It will always be there.
But so is the next decision.
Maybe that’s the question worth carrying into this week.
What can we do this week that we’ll actually remember?
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I love this!!
Thank you! I’m so glad you did – and commented.