Something to look
forward to

It has been said that we need just three things in life:
something to do, something to look forward to and someone to love.

—Maya Angelou

I believe that looking forward to something is possibly one of the most important things in anyone’s life. It’s important because looking forward to something gives us hope and hope is what keeps us positive in our outlook on life. But there is something else just as important as hope and it’s all about a state of well-being. Why? Because having something to look forward to will slow our lives down, allowing us to fit more in and, importantly, fit a real quality into our lives.

When we have something to look forward to it’s as if everything starts to meander. Yes, it meanders for me. It just seems to go slow in a lovely way that helps separate the junk in my life and allows only the truly important factors to become my focus.

We don’t need to be constantly on the go. I look at kids these days and the planning mechanism is very different from the planning mechanism of yesteryear. Now, when I say kids, I’m referring to anyone under the age of 30. It’s anyone who is about to embark on life’s real journey.

We touched on this before. I’d now like to point out a couple of things about the secrets to keeping us blokes on the straight and narrow.

You probably have inklings as to what I may say but I reckon you may be surprised. Whilst I hold many theories, one theory is we all have to slow our lives down. To do this, again it will be you girls who have to help us all slow down. It’s what we want you to do for us. If you are able to demonstrate to us blokes how to slow down, you will get more attention from us and there can’t be anything wrong with that. Well can there? It is what you want isn’t it, more attention? If not grab the television control and have a happy life. I’m fairly confident they are showing re-runs of The Love Boat.

So why do I mention, something to look forward to?

I want you to imagine me or anyone else when we were younger. Well, when I was young, (a while ago it seems at some 35 years ago), and when I was aged 16 or 17, we didn’t go out, or have many extracurricular activities with our friends every night, the same way kids seem to go out these days.

I remember we would arrive at school on a Monday and talk about what we did over the weekend. We didn’t actually see our friends over the weekend a lot of the time, and since we didn’t have mobile phones we didn’t talk that often either. Our getting together was generally based on sport, playing cricket in the summer, football in the winter and surfing all year round. But night time get-togethers were very limited and there weren’t the activities available, so we basically watched television on Saturday nights at home with our parents or by ourselves if our parents went out.

However, when we did have something to do, we would know about it well in advance. We planned our activities and we all knew about these activities that were going to take place.

So here is how it would go down, especially during the week before our big event. As a group we would talk and chat about it until the cows came home. What we were going to do, how we would meet and how we would get home.

The result was time would slow down because we would have something to look forward to for the week. As adults now, I still feel life slowing down when I have something that I’m really looking forward to happening like a holiday, a catch up with great friends, or seeing my kids.

These days I see kids organising their Friday nights at 7pm … on the Friday night; they send out a simple text message to all their friends and then head to the destination. There is no pre-planning, just instant gratification. Yes, we all complain about kids these days and their instant gratification.

As you can guess this doesn’t slow time down but rather speeds it up. So what’s the solution?

Help your bloke to slow down. We know you are busy, but if you give your man something to look forward to he will slow down, to give you more attention and help you with your busy schedule. It could be as simple as just having that special Sunday night roast every week. Not a bad idea really when you consider that if the roast is on a Sunday and blokes love roasts, then his weekend may also slow down with that anticipation of looking forward to Sunday, then your Sunday night together, the night where his tummy has been filled with joy.

When we have something to look forward to we all slow down, so just do it.

Anyway, my daily routine is heading into the city from beautiful Manly on a ferry. It’s relaxing and entertaining, and every day it slows my life down. There must be so many ways to slow our lives down and have something to look forward to, the same way I also look forward to waking every day and swimming in an ocean full of sea life.

Could getting together with friends or family be the weekly occurrence we could all look forward to? Friends are one thing, but once the little birds have flown the nest it gets a little more difficult. They also need to have something to look forward to, so no matter what age you are, make sure you have something to look forward to in seeing your family every week.

Slow us down and get more out of us, in life and in bed.

It’s a dream I know but if we can do it once a year when we look to book holidays or just chill out at home, why can’t we do it on a daily or weekly basis. Just for starters, much of the stress that revolves around our daily busy lives may well be eliminated.

If we can eliminate a lot of stress from our daily lives, then hopefully it will eliminate some, or ideally all, of the stress that builds up and attacks our relationships.

Less stress, more harmony, more harmony, more love, more love, more happiness, more happiness, longer life, longer life then hopefully a truly better life.

If we were on the outside looking in, or taking a bird’s eye view of our lives, isn’t this what we would recommend to others … especially the people we love? How many times have you said to your partner or asked them politely to just stop and chill out? People like people who are able to adjust to being able to chill out.

So I’m telling you now — chill out; chill out with us and we will all have something to look forward to every day.

I now understand the Mediterranean way of life. Every day they get to chill out by having their siestas after lunch. A siesta is a Spanish word that spread through the Mediterranean countries and has Latin origins for the number six. So six hours after dawn it is time for a rest. We all know the Greeks, Italians, Spanish and Portuguese are a pretty relaxed bunch of olive munchers so why wouldn’t we take a vine leaf out of their books. We just don’t need the stress, so by having this bit of relaxation maybe we could wake up every morning with something to look forward to during the day. It’s a bit idealistic but maybe the afternoons on weekends could be a start.

I knew we’d get back to afternoon delights somehow.

Even during the week when each of you leave for work in the morning, that beautiful gesture could well be just telling your partner you are looking forward to seeing them that night. Every man would have a smile on his face for the entire day.

So something to look forward to can help us all in so many ways — the most of important of these being that it will keep us together.

We have all been there and we all know it. When we look forward to seeing someone time does slow down, so let’s all give it a go.

Even if there is not someone special in your life as a lover there is always someone you can pick out that can be the person you are looking forward to seeing that day. As I write these very words I am looking forward to seeing someone tomorrow who I have been waiting to see for about a week. I just know when I meet this person that there is going to be laughter and happiness so I have someone and something for me to look forward to.

How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy.
In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come;
in old age, we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day, when we have time.

—Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon