Lessons About Juggling – and juggling it all
By Kimberly Hicken
I had a co-worker once who could juggle. Every now and then, she would pull three or four balls out of her desk and start juggling. She rarely missed. I tried to have her teach me the skill, but I never caught on. Every time I tried, I felt like I was one of the most uncoordinated people on the planet. Of course, if I had actually practiced, I might have figured out how to do it. I’ll admit that I wasn’t fully motivated to learn. Juggling was cool, but I had enough other things on my plate that I didn’t make learning how to juggle a priority. However, as I look back on the experience, I realize that life is a juggling act and there are things we can learn from my colleague’s attempts to teach me how to juggle.
Lesson One:
It’s not as easy as other people make it look.
My co-worker made juggling look simple. She could keep the balls in the air for a long time. On the real life side of things, I used to look at the other mothers around me with something very close to jealousy. They made everything look so easy. How was it possible that these women could work full-time, prepare nutritious meals three times a day, attend every parent/teacher conference, do crafts, have their hair and make-up done, etc., etc., and so forth? You get the idea. I saw them as being able to do everything and do it well.
It turns out that these women were just like me. They had strengths and weaknesses, and amazingly, they were NOT perfect. If they did cute crafts to decorate their homes, it turned out that maybe they fed their kids hot dogs for lunch and cold cereal for dinner. If they were fixing three amazing meals every day, they weren’t doing crafts, and quite possibly the bathrooms weren’t getting cleaned either.
Even more importantly, I discovered that getting stuff done was just as difficult for them as it was for me. It turns out that other moms are just as stressed, worried, overworked, and sleep deprived as I am! None of us have it easy. That was a real a-ha moment for me, but then I discovered something even more surprising. There were women in my community who thought that I was doing it all and that I made everything look easy. Go figure! It turns out that we all struggle, and for some reason, we try to hide that fact from everyone else. We don’t need to. It’s okay to admit that we’re not perfect, and it’s okay to let people know that sometimes life is just hard.
Lesson Two:
Practice helps, but it doesn’t necessarily make you perfect.
My co-worker was a very good juggler. She could juggle for quite a while, but eventually, she would miss a ball. It would hit the floor and roll across the room. She was good because she practiced, but she wasn’t perfect. It’s the same thing in real life. As we work at things, we get better, but we never really achieve perfection, and that’s okay.
I learned that if I developed a schedule or a routine and then stuck with it, things went more smoothly. After a while, the routine would be second nature because I had practiced it so much. Does that mean things were always perfect? Of course not. Sometimes events would happen to throw off my routine. Sometimes, I would get off schedule just because I made poor choices, but it was okay. Since I had practiced the schedule, it was easy to get things moving smoothly again. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:
When I had five kids at home, we had a very strict morning schedule so that I could get to work on time and the kids could catch the bus. It looked like this: At 4:00, my daughter would get up and shower and then go back to bed. At 5:15, she would get up again and get ready for school. (This was her choice. Not mine.) Her ride left at 5:45 because she had cheerleading practice at 6:00 am. At 4:00 I would also get up and get changed into workout clothes. At 4:30, I would exercise. At 5:15, I would get my daughter up again and I would fix the sack lunches for the kids, set out permission slips, and find my clothes for the day. My daughter left at 5:45 and I would get in the shower. I was dressed by 6:00. Then I would get up my son to take his shower. He was showered by 6:15. Then I would get up his brother to shower. That brother was finished by 6:30. At 6:30, I woke up the youngest two kids. They had showered the night before, so they just needed to get ready. From 6:30 to 7:00 kids were getting dressed, finding books, grabbing a quick breakfast of cereal, toast, instant oatmeal, or whatever they fixed. I was busy getting ready for work. At 7:00, we left the house. The two youngest were dropped off at the babysitter’s house, the two boys were dropped off at the bus stop, and I was at work by 7:15.
Everything had to stay on schedule, or we would miss the bus which meant me driving them to school and being very late for work. It was a practiced routine, and mornings were mostly smooth. However, sometimes, I slept in. Sometimes shoes were lost. Sometimes permission slips were misplaced. Sometimes life happened, and it threw our schedule off. It was frustrating, but because we had a practiced routine, we were usually able to get back on track quite easily. That’s not to say we always caught the bus or I was always on time for work. Sometimes things went haywire, but usually our practice paid off.
The same held true for our routines after school to get kids to and from sports practices, music lessons, scouts, youth activities, and to make sure chores and homework were done before bedtime. Practicing a schedule actually makes it easier.
Lesson Three
Sometimes it’s okay to let things go. We don’t have to do it all.
Even though my colleague was really good at juggling, that didn’t mean that she felt compelled to catch the ball every single time. Sometimes she missed, and she was okay with that. In fact, sometimes she would miss on purpose. I don’t know why, but I suspect it amused her to watch someone chase after the ball. The other thing she did was change up the number of balls she would juggle. She could juggle with 4 and 5 balls, but that didn’t mean she always did. People always wanted her to juggle 5 balls because that was the most amazing to watch, and sometimes she did, but not always. Sometimes she was content to juggle with just 3 balls, and everyone was just as entertained when she juggled 3 as when she juggled 4 and 5.
In the real world, I have learned that I don’t have to do everything. Sometimes it’s okay to say no. I remember the first time I skipped a Back-to-School night. Don’t judge me. I’d had a difficult day at work. I came home feeling tired and achy, like I was coming down with something. I wanted to crawl into bed and sleep, but Back-to-School night was on the calendar for my elementary school kids. I asked them if they cared if we skipped it. It turns out, they didn’t want to go either. I didn’t need to go to meet the teachers or find out the class expectations because my older children had already had those teachers. I chose to stay home. It was wonderful! Since nothing else was scheduled that night, we actually enjoyed a pleasant evening at home as a family.
Another time the PTA was having a fundraising dinner. The parents were supposed to provide a food item based on what grade their children were in. According to the schedule brought home by my kids, I was providing the entire meal! My kindergartener needed to bring a package of hot dogs, my 2nd grader needed to bring hot dog buns, my 4th grader needed to bring some sort of salad, and my 6th grader was supposed to bring cookies. In a panic I called a friend of mine who also had several children to see what she was doing. I couldn’t afford to bring all the items, and I didn’t have time to make cookies or a salad. My friend said, “You don’t have to do it all. Just pick one item and send it.” I sent a package of hot dogs. Surprisingly, no one called me to complain. My children didn’t get kicked out of school. I wasn’t ostracized by the community. And the PTA dinner was a success.
It’s a lot like juggling…just because people think you should do it or just because you can do it, doesn’t mean that you have to do it. It’s okay to let things go.
Final Lesson
Have fun!
My colleague juggled because it was fun! It was fun for her, for her students, and for her co-workers. It was something that she truly enjoyed doing. I believe that this is the most important lesson of all. We need to enjoy life.
Yes, we have responsibilities and things that we have to do, but at the end of the day, we should be sure that at least a few of those activities were fun and rewarding. She juggled because she enjoyed it. As we juggle our own lives, we need to make sure that we’re adding a little bit of fun as well. Life is stressful enough. We can alleviate that stress by throwing a few fun things into the mix or by just remembering why we are doing what we’re doing and enjoying the moment and the process.
I’ll probably never learn how to juggle. It’s not high on my list of priorities, but I have learned that it’s possible to juggle the activities in my life in such a way that I don’t feel overly stressed so that I’m enjoying life too.