The stew

Sometimes life presents challenges that can cause us to doubt our ability to meet those challenges.

With all the modern technology and years of experience behind mankind, you would think that life would get easier, wouldn’t you?

Wouldn’t the lessons of our forefathers lighten our burden – the generation who has followed?

Sometimes, it seems it’s even harder – even with all the modern advantages we have.

The world is changing and there are new things we have to deal with every day.

New fears, new risks, new problems, new worries.

Time seems do be the biggest obstacle for a lot of folks I know.

So many people struggle to find the time to do everything they need to do and still have a little left over for some things they want to do.

Time.

Sometimes, there just doesn’t seem to be enough of it to go around.

I guess I always thought life would get easier as I got older.

It’s logical to think that.

Practice makes perfect, right?

Wrong.

We do learn from our mistakes and experience is a valuable thing, but as we get older, we add things to our life that offset any gains in efficiency.

Like a big pot of stew, in life as we get older, we are often tempted to add a little of this, a little of that, and before we know it, our pot is overflowing and the whole situation seems to be getting a little out of hand.

The problem is, we can’t add time.

Time is static. There are only 24 hours in the day, and there are only 365 days in the year and that doesn’t change as we get older and so as we add "more" to our lives, it becomes "more" of a struggle to get things done on schedule.

Time is precious and it is fleeting.

Ultimately, though, I think life is what you make of it.

We make our choices, and sometimes those choices require a great deal of effort and some sacrifice. We choose what to spend time on.

If we put too many ingredients in the stew, what often follows is not what we had hoped for.

It’s not always an easy choice to make, but sometimes you’ve got to resist the temptation to add more ingredients to the stew.

After all, sometimes, the simplest stews are the most delicious of all.