Importance revisited

As groups, as parents, as individuals, the question of importance and priorities is a funny combination of "obvious" and "blind spot." How do I spend my time? How do I spend my money? What does a budget show me? The interesting thing is that somehow, even without all the tools, kids know what matters to the people around them.

The things that we invest ourselves in are important indicators. The things that are missing are indicators that are just as important. We can look at how we spend our time and with whom, to see what's important to us. We can engineer our time and relationships to prove or reenforce what's important to us. Then it helps to have people around you who might be looking or challenging you from a different angle or seeing things from the outside instead of from the inside.

At any point in our lives we can say, gee, this isn't really important to me. Why am I investing so much of myself here? Or I thought this mattered more to me but I'm not making time for it. What do I have to change? Is it really important? If so, what do I have to change?