The weight of words

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Have you ever noticed that words, besides their energy, also carry a certain weight?
Words like ‘responsibility’, ‘discipline’, ‘obligation’ seem to have a much greater weight than words like ‘playfulness’, ‘vacationing’, or ‘yoga class’.

I have found that there are few words, however, that carry a greater weight than ‘I have to...’
I have to put the garbage out. I have to do this job. I have to be home in time.
And with every ‘I have to...’ it seems the burden becomes greater.

Often everything we ‘have to’ do is placed sometime in our future. It can be something that ‘has to be done’ today, or perhaps this week, or this month. Either way it is something that we are not doing right now. Because right now we are juggling in our minds all the thins we ‘have to do’, with the usually limited time we have available to do them.
It seems that the more we think about it, the heaver the load gets to be. And we haven’t even started yet...

And that could well be at least part of the problem.
By thinking about all the things we are going to do because we ‘have to do them’, we have put our focus into the future. We are aware of what problems may be laying ahead if something we intend to do drops off the list sometime later that day or that week. We are totally conscious that this may cause a problem down the pike. It is a mighty burden!

The only thing we are not focused on anymore is what is happening right now. Right here.

It is one of those things that is very helpful to become aware of as how we put things into words can give us a hint as to whether we are doing the best we can with what we got ~ or whether we are burdening ourselves with an extra weight...

Now, having a good understanding of everything on our todo list is a good thing. But once we have our todo list, we may be better served by saying things like ‘I am starting with...’, or ‘I am going to...’ rather than ‘I have to’.

Keeping our focus and our awareness in the present lessens the weight.
Using words or statements that enforce us being in the present allows us to be busy without being overburdened.
It permits us to do the things we intend to do on a lighter note, with a spring in our steps.
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