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Hello readers! As a juggling homeschooling parent with passions and responsiblities, i often think of how we can squeeze everything into our day, into our lives, while not neglecting the objects of our love, especially our children. This post is not an attempt to give a clear-cut answer to this question, i am as much doing the dance as anyone. Maybe though, this post can help trigger some thought on how we’ve been approaching the challenge and help bring fresh ideas to any of you who struggle to get it all done.

Parents who seek to nurture their kids in the best possible way they can, to provide for them opportunities for healthy growth and spiritual development, desiring to raise children that will play their part in the building of a civilization of peace, are bombarded with advice, information, and resources and invest a lot of themselves in drawing out what’s useful to them and practicing it in their lives. They can really have their plates full with this endeavor alone. To add to the many voices with opinions out there, i believe to raise these little champions of justice requires to constantly grow and develop oneself, at the same time. The wisdom-mining serves both souls. Our own actions need to reflect the teachings we wish to enrich their lives with for the benefit of both.

Personally, i want the wisdom that strikes me as beautiful and practical to become second nature to me, that i may embody it fully, thereby being available to new learnings and more growth. But to embody these truths that spellbind my heart, i need to revisit them, or they become buried under the next and many more beautiful truths that enchant me daily. Therefore, i need to revisit, and revisit again, these gems of wisdom that my heart resonates with in order to be able to practice them daily and to embody them. Re-reading books, passages, and quotes, trying my best to practice them in daily life, understanding them in new light, meanwhile reading new books, new quotes and new passages, applying all of the old and new to fresh circumstances every day.

This continuous knowledge quest for better parenting and personal growth is one of the many hats a parent might love or have to wear. It doesn’t end with learning and parenting. There are passions – work that brings true fulfillment, and also work that doesn’t. Service, family, community, projects and diverse dreams are yet other things one might want to give time to. Plus there is cleaning, cooking and those various daily life chores that must be done. How does one do it all? The world as it is today, in general, is fast-paced, work and money orientated, and struggling to balance all aspects of a harmony-aspiring life can bring much stress to a heart. There could always possibly remain unattended longings on the back-burner of life, bringing perhaps deep, unwanted disappointment.

There is a baha’í quote, written by Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the baha’í Faith, that goes “Where there is love, nothing is too much trouble, and there is always time.” If i think about this quote, i start thinking “Really, what kind of Love is this, what is the quality of the Love that permits this?” Now one might think that Love is the basis of all good things, and i would be quick to agree, yet in another quote He states that “Truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues.” “Without truthfulness, progress and success, in all the worlds of God, are impossible for any soul.” So, the foundation is truthfulness, not Love? I guess our Love must first be truthful! So this is the imagery i suggest: on this foundation of truthfulness, we can build, brick by brick, a house of this mysterious all-powerful Love, inside of and thanks to which can be undertaken all the aspirations of the thriving soul. They need not be directed by an seemingly existent yet unfounded dichotomy.  The growth, the learning, the parenting, the passions, the work, the service, all are flourishing under one roof, ventures of this one soul who can wear all the hats he wants. All are a part of the whole, and all are interconnected, feed off each other and develop, perhaps not uniformly but at at their own natural rhythm.

With this house of Love we can find the time to “do it all” by embracing the wholeness of all parts of our lives. But if we want the house to stand firmly, first we need a good foundation to build it on. Truthfulness is the foundation. What does that mean? In a straightforward way, i could start by asking myself:  what do i really want? Do i want what society is putting out there, dictating what i should invest my time in, how, and for what reasons? What kind of a rush am i in anyway, and why? Am i trying to please someone else? What are the things i really want to be doing and contributing to in this world? What virtues can i work on to help me achieve this, and what do they look like?

Truthfulness is fundamental to a life of integrity. Taking steps towards this integrity – to strive that our thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions become aligned – i’d say demands that we become completely truthful with our own selves about what we want and what we stand for. I think this is when we can really accept and manage to live against the relentless current of the mainstream, call our own shots, and balance our time more harmoniously and organically.

Sometimes, the little problems and questions we think are obstacles to a fulfilling life are just distractions from the bigger question hiding behind them. I was meditating on some bigger questions that my introspections led me to, and i was inspired with answers that didn’t cover my small questions but strangely enough rendered them practically irrelevant. In that moment everything became complete and permeated with meaning. I can now take the next baby step in building my house of Love, trustingly, until the next small question in disguise kicks me in the shins and i am forced to hunker down in thought and re-assess. All the time in the world is useless to our happiness if we don’t take the little time it takes to be honest with ourselves and periodically ensure the foundation is stable.

As a human family we inspire each other constantly and must encourage each other to ride the waves and not be overtaken by the tumultuous ocean of responsibilities. Throw a buoy to those hopes and dreams and bring them aboard.

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