Life to the Third Power

Have you ever noticed how our life seems to come in threes? As small children, we read books like The Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks and The Three Bears. In school, we were taught to write essays with an introduction, supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion. The scientific theory includes a prediction, the experiment and the outcome or conclusion. Even our most popular phrases sit better on the tongue if we use three—“The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”, “the good , the bad, and the ugly”, “Go, Fight, Win!”

I began thinking about this, as my teenagers were rushing out the door this morning. I wondered why do they have such trouble getting places on time? And I realized that even in daily living there is a power of 3. In every action, there is a need for preparation, activity, and closure. Take mealtime for instance—you must first cook the meal, then eat it, and then clean up.

Even the simplest of actions follow this rule. Let’s look at going to bed. There is a preparation time—brushing your teeth, putting on your pajamas, going to the bathroom, feeding the pet, locking the doors, plugging in the rechargeable technology, getting the glass of water, fixing tomorrow’s lunches, throwing in that last load of laundry (Okay that was the women’s list—men, just follow me through the first two or three!) Then, the actual sleeping occurs. And then you need to have a wake-up process--the stretch, morning coffee and paper, morning news on TV routine.

The problem occurs when one act merges into another without that closure time. This problem happens more and more when we get busier and busier. We wake up by jumping in the shower and getting dressed, which should really be our preparation time for going to work. We never really closed down sleeping mode.
We get up from the supper table (if we even ever sat down, maybe we went through the drive-thru) and we rush out to the next sports event or meeting without really taking time to eat together and definitely forgetting to clean-up. Which leaves us to do the clean-up or catch up with the kids day during our getting ready for bed time!

As an elementary school teacher, the hardest thing to do in a school day is to make sure we look over and assimilate the work we just did before moving on with our day. Children are just geared toward being finished when they have accomplished the task. But we all know, you must clean up before you move on to something else or the mess will get unbearable. I can hear my mother saying, “Put that game away before you get out a new one.” She was in effect, teaching us the importance of closure.

Back to my teens, I realized they were already behind when they went to bed. In exhaustion, they had not prepared for the next day. The alarms were not set, the clothes were not laid out, the plans were not made. It’s the same scenario in many of our daily lives as we try to get as much out of each day and cram too many activities together, not allowing ourselves time to “put away one game, before we get out a new one.”

I have heard the expression that “a three legged stool never wobbles.” I think we can apply that thought to almost every daily activity in life—prepare, enjoy, and savor!