We adorn our walls with peel-off vinyl letters, calendars and beautiful, handmade, wooden signs that remind us, “”Life is not measured by how many breaths you take, but by how many moments take your breath away”, “Don’t dream your life, live your dreams”, and “Live every day of your life.”

And sometimes, when we read those reminders or turn our calendars to a particularly compelling page, we feel it. It permeates us to our very souls; we remind ourselves that, “Yes, I will slow my life down. I will pay attention. I will be present in each moment.”

And sometimes when we read those reminders, we feel like a failure. Oh, we mean to slow down. We mean to pay attention. We mean to be present. But it’s hard, isn’t it?

Life seems to realy just get in the way of…well…life. Children get sick. We say ‘yes’ to a few too many commitments. We honestly intend to do it all, but it’s too much. And we feel like failures at our own lives.

We watch other people who seem able to do it all. They work, bake birthday cakes in the shape of their child’s favorite movie character (from scratch, no less!) and celebrate every obscure holiday with handmade decorations and clever themes. They picnic, haul their family to sports WITH nutritious snacks, find time to exercise AND keep a perfect house.

We’re certain they live their lives truly and completely by quotation and we fall well short in our own minds.

As a mother and grandmother, I have a few thoughts about trying to live like this.

Most of the time, it doesn’t work. We get so caught up in trying to create perfect memories, we forget to pause and just ‘be’ in the moment with our families.

A common quotation of my ‘motherhood era’ was, ‘Cleaning and scrubbing can wait ‘til tomorrow, children grow up we’ve learned to our sorrow, so fly away cobwebs and dust go to sleep, I’m minding my baby and babies don’t keep.”

Oh that caused me anguish! As a young mother, I felt every single failure profoundly. I watched the parade of time pass by and, although I spent a lot of hours with my children in many creative and loving ways, I was never able to embrace the philosophy of cobwebs flying away and dust disappearing. It bothered me. I needed my house to be clean.

It was impossible for me to find balance between the perfection I thought other mothers achieved and what my life really was.

I was exhausted. And haggard. And sometimes, to be quite candid, not a whole lot of fun.

When I finally realized the expectations I’d set for myself were unattainable, I recognized that in order to slow down and be fully present I needed to prioritize things in life.

I created a list of the finite firsts and lasts most important to me in my children’s lives. My list contained the number of times I hoped an event would occur while they were still living with me. It was surprising to discover how few they were in number:

First and last days of school – 13

Losing the first tooth – 1

Christmas – 18

Easter Egg hunts – 18

And so on.

When I was finished, my list contained about twenty entries that I carefully wrote on my calendar each year, along with the usual dates to celebrate family and friends birthdays and anniversaries.

My new goal was to be fully present on each of the days on that list. I planned for them with the careful attention I would use for any ‘can’t miss’ event. The rest of the time I did the best I could.

Sure, I tried to read to my kids every night, listen to their worries and find a smile when I was totally stressed out over money or marital issues. But it didn’t always work for me. Sometimes I parked them in front of the TV with a bowl of cereal for dinner. Sometimes I told them they were giving me a headache.

But I didn’t spend a lot of time worrying or lamenting over those days. I did my best.

As my children left the nest, I continued some of the traditions I’d started: making certain to send a silly pair of socks in the mail on St. Patrick’s Day, Easter baskets, egg hunts, etc. The habit of focusing on my list of priorities had become ingrained in my mind.

If I was going to try to live by quotation now, it would be the single word, “Balance.”

For me, trying to live up to the perceived perfection of everyone else’s abilities, standards and accomplishments was far too difficult. I’d been so busy trying to make things special, I’d sometimes forgotten to hit the ‘pause button’ and enjoy the moments I’d been scrambling to create.

Balance.

Slow down.

Let quotations influence moments in your life, but don’t feel like a failure when every moment doesn’t feel like a quotation.

Save some of yourself for you.