I listened to a Mandy Patinkin CD the other day and one of the songs on it is called "Coffee in a Cardboard Cup." If you haven't heard the song, its message is that the trouble with the world today is that everything is "hur-hur-hurry up." Our affluent society is drinking its coffee from cardboard cups, with plastic spoons and sugar packs. The song points out that we've got "Ready Whip, instant tea, Minute Rice, My oh Me" (after all, it had to rhyme!).

Do you find this to be true in your own life? Summer - when the living is supposed to be easy - sometimes seems to be as hectic as the rest of the year, especially with kids out of school and looking for something to do. Around here (North Dakota border town 30 minutes from "The Lakes") everything pretty much shuts down by Friday noon as people are frantically getting packed and ready to head to their lake places where they can cook and clean and mow and get the dock in and clean the boat just in time to pack up the car and head back to town to start it all over again.

I spent last week commuting to a Minnesota town about 90 minutes away where I was doing some training, and had the opportunity to listen to another Wayne Dyer seminar on CD. He talked in that one about how, back in the 1800's, Thoreau decided to pack it in and moved out to Walden Pond where he could live the simple life. He wrote that it was necessary to "simplify, simplify, simplify," to which his friend and teacher Emerson replied, "I think one 'simplify' would have sufficed."

But he had it right, didn't he?

Make a pact to give yourself five minutes sometime during the day to just BE. Get up from what you're doing and look out the window. Enjoy the sun (or the moon or the rain or the wind, whatever the case may be at that moment). If you have to, set an alarm that will remind you to get up and BE just for those 5 minutes. You'll be more focused and energized if you allow YOU to be part of your day.

And next time you stop by the coffee shop for a cup on the run, consider taking a moment to really enjoy the sights and smells while you're there.

Maybe next time you'll want to experience it in a porcelain cup instead!