That’s All I Need!

The other night I had one of those moments.

It was the end of our night.  Rachel and I had just returned from our awesome trip to Connecticut, but after six hours in the car we were tuckered out!  She was upstairs getting ready for bed; I was doing some last-minute picking up after dropping our bags in the living room.

Rachel asked me to bring up her journal from her bag.  I was about to head upstairs when I remembered I wanted to pour her a glass of water.  Our first floor is set up like a circle, so I headed back around through the dining room to the fridge to get one.

“Okay, I think that’s all I need!  Up to bed!”

As I was heading for the stairs, I remembered I had left my own water in the living room.  Back down the hall I went.

“Okay, that should be all I need!  Up I go!”

By the time I got back to the stairs, I remembered I had left my phone on the arm of the couch.  Back around I went.

“Alrighty!  That’s all I need!”

After walking back to the stairs, I realized that since we had just gotten home, I had to pull the phone chargers out of my camera bag.  I swear, hamster in a wheel much?

“Okay…that should really be all I need…”

Slightly irritated with myself that I was being this forgetful and simultaneously this needy, on my trip back through the kitchen, I saw Rachel’s phone in the darkness and knew I just had to bring it upstairs for her.

I stopped myself for a moment.  “Okay,” I thought, “is there seriously ANYTHING ELSE I could POSSIBLY need to bring up?!”

Then I saw the book by the door that I wanted to read before bed.

“Dag nabbit.”

So, with two glasses of water, two phones and their respective chargers, Rachel’s journal, and my book, I stumbled up the stairs.  As I waddled into the bedroom, arms chock-full of stuff, I proceeded to do my best impression of Steve Martin in “The Jerk.”

Apparently I had left my ego downstairs.

I tell this story not just out of sheer need for self-deprecation, nor for the fact that I dearly love doing Navin Johnson impressions.

Instead, I mention it because our lives can be cluttered.  Sometimes it’s difficult to know what we really need.  And sometimes it feels like we drag a lot of unnecessary things with us because we feel like we need them.  Rachel and I have been trying to simplify so much about our home and our way of life.  The fact that I felt like I couldn’t go upstairs to bed before making six loops around my house to grab everything I needed to take up with me was a wakeup call that we are not yet where we want to be with that process.

It feels weird to admit that.  And to admit that it’s a process instead of a box to check off.

I’m someone who likes “getting to the end” of a project and meeting a goal.  But lately I’m often being reminded that life and the accomplishments we make in it are part of a journey, not merely destinations in and of themselves.  Stepping back for a moment and remembering to enjoy that journey can make a world of difference in an everyday situation that would otherwise go unnoticed or illicit negative feelings.

Plus, making Rachel giggle to the point of tears with my ridiculous impressions never hurts.

~ Greg (& Rachel)