Smelling The Roses

Smelling the Roses

Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay.

1 Peter 4:9

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright once told of an incident from his childhood that he saw as having had a profound influence on his life. The winter he was nine, he walked with his uncle across a snowy field. His uncle was a no-nonsense kind of man, and as the two of them reached the far end of the field, he stopped young Frank. He pointed to his own tracks in the snow, running straight along, and then at Frank’s tracks, meandering all over the field. “Notice how your tracks wander aimlessly from the fence to the cattle to the woods and back again,” his uncle said. “And see how my tracks aim directly to my goal. There is an important lesson in that.” Years later the world-famous architect acknowledged that he had indeed taken a lesson from the event: “I determined right then not to miss most things in life, as my uncle had.”^a

It’s a good lesson. In an age when we often feel compelled to check our e-mail or instant messages just for the sake of staying on top of our to-do lists, we can miss out on the spontaneity of a moment that offers far more than mere task completion. This is nowhere more true than in our relationships with one another as husband and wife. In fact, we have a friend who frequently made a pact with his wife to no longer touch his BlackBerry or iPad at the table. It had gotten out of hand and he knew it. He was missing out on connecting, always thinking he’d do just one more task before engaging with her. Of course, all of us who do this run the risk of spending our entire lives indefinitely preparing to live—but never actually doing it.

Take the time today to meander off your beeline path to smell the proverbial roses with your spouse.

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon—instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

—Dale Carnegie

^a 41