The Rocks in My Jar

One night several months ago, I was laying in bed feeling completely overwhelmed with life. It's an all-to-familiar event. If I were able to sum up how this goes over for me in Disney form, it would translate to this meme right here.

My mind raced about how I was going to find time to be a better mom, wife, friend, and volunteer, while still cooking healthy meals, exercising, cleaning my house, getting organized, planning family trips and activities, budgeting, and following my dreams (just to name a few). Some days it feels as though all I've done is run around in circles just to make sure everyone survives, how was any of this even possible? My anxiety-filled musings eventually turned to prayer, and it wasn't long before a crystal clear thought came to my mind. It was an image of a jar full of large rocks, pebbles, and sand. Immediately I felt calm and knew that it was time to reconsider how I was prioritizing my life. As soon as I got that straightened out, it felt like everything would fall into place.

If you aren't sure why a jar filled with rocks would inspire such a reaction, you may not be familiar with the analogy of The Rocks and the Jar--an object lesson used to teach time management and priorities.

Here's the basic premise: Each of us has the same amount of time in a day. That's our "jar." We all get to choose how we fill that jar. Large rocks represent the most important priorities in our life--our relationships--and should go in the jar first. The pebbles represent the daily activities we should do to be self-sufficient, productive human beings. They go in next, fitting around the large rocks. The sand represents the less significant things in our lives that might be fun or entertaining. They filter into the jar last, filling in all the crevices. If we follow this particular order, there will be enough room (or time) for all of them. If not, there's no way you can fit them all in each day.

As I was taught the analogy, there are three of these large rocks. One is our relationship with God or a Higher Power, whatever that means to you. For me, that means spending time praying, studying scripture, and living my life in a way that it follows my value system. Another one is the relationship we have with ourselves. These are things considered "self-care" (not self-indulgence, there's a difference). For me that's daily yoga, meditation, exercise, eating healthy, and developing my talents. The other is our relationship with others, or the time spent communicating with and serving loved ones.

Maybe these rocks seem pretty cut and dry for some, but for me, these relationships are irregular, multi-faceted, and complicated. I have some emotional and mental blocks about each of these rocks. I wonder if others do too, and that's why for some, making the rocks fit in the jar seems unobtainable.

Perhaps that's why for some, it's easier to forget about them and get buried by the pebbles (things like career, housework, errands, activities, schoolwork, etc). Maybe that's why some people ignore the rocks entirely, and instead fill their day with too much sand--mindless buffers such as social media, shows or videos, spending money, other forms of entertainment. Note: I use sugar for sand in my analogy, initially because I didn't have any sand, but when I thought about it, sugar is perfect since these are the things that are fun in moderation but are generally "non-nutritive" to our growth and can actually be harmful in excess.

Fitting the figurative rocks in sometimes feels impossible sometimes to me, and as it turns out, my literal ones don't actually fit in my jar either. You might have noticed already from the picture.

This was an accident. As I prepared this object lesson myself to teach my kids, I decided that I would paint my large rocks (which obviously wasn't necessary, but I kept seeing cute mandala and dot-art rocks all over the internet and had wanted to give it a try for fun. Word to the wise--it's not very easy to make cute painted rocks...so, I'll stick with fluid art). I got some flat, smooth rocks from the beach during a weekend get-away in February--for this purpose, might I add. I didn't think to check that they fit the jar; I just assumed they would. By the time I realized that they don't fit neatly into ANY of the jars in my house, they were already painted and I was too annoyed to think about finding new ones. The process had already been long and drug out and I wasn't going to look for a new jar, so I was just going to roll with it and make it work.

Time went on again before I actually sat down to share it with my kids. When I finally did, they thought it was great. The older two had been intrigued by the painted rocks and were happy to see the alcohol ink pebbles out (I had made them sometime last year). I was still irritated with myself that it had taken so long to do, but satisfied enough and decided that I would blog about it the next day since this principle is such an important part of my art journey.

But now here I am, over a week later and I'm finally taking time to type this up. In fact, I hadn't touched my blog at all until now. Alone, that wouldn't be a big deal, but combined with the fact that I've been struggling figuring out how to get my figurative "rocks and pebbles" fit in each day, I was feeling pretty defeated. I found myself, again, lying awake this past weekend and thinking about my jar-- both literal and figurative--and was confronted with some very raw overthinking.

What if my "jar" really has nothing to do with the amount of time in each day? What if instead, it represents my capacity to do things? I know I'm capable...but maybe I'm just not as capable as other people. That's why my rocks won't fit no matter what. It's too hard for me to be successful with relationships. It's too frustrating trying to have a connection with God. I've put so much work into developing my talents lately, but maybe I shouldn't have been doing that. I can't change the size of the rocks! This is just the small jar I've been given, why do I fight it? Maybe it's time to pick something to give up on. Maybe it's time to stop caring so much.

Has anyone found the switch that turns middle-of-the-night-overthinking mode off, by-the-way? I haven't but would LOVE to. These are thoughts that I don't want to entertain, the kinds of thoughts I'd been working so hard to overcome. But they kept nagging at me to the point that I was starting to believe them.

Then today as I was out for a walk, I decided to listen to a podcast I'd never listened to before. I had scrolled through the episodes and picked a random one that caught my eye. The particular one I listened to was about having a better evening and morning routine in order to have a better day, and who'd a guessed it--this good ol' rocks in the jar analogy was mentioned several times.

Something hit me as I thought about it then. I believe in the principle behind this, and visuals like these are super helpful and great for learning concepts. But for people like me who have perfectionist expectations, they can be a source of frustration that leads to giving up easily. My life just doesn't fit neatly in the jar. No one's does, mo matter how put together they seem. Does that mean I'm failing and should forget about the rocks? Of course not.

In my new and improved version of this analogy, the rocks will never fit perfectly in the jar because they aren't supposed to fit. Working on our relationships can never be checked off a list in the way laundry or t-ball practice can. We can't spend a few minutes in the morning in prayer, self-care, and reaching out to others, and feel like that's good enough, and that everything else will fall into place perfectly. I'm not saying those things don't help--they totally do--it's just been a different, better mindset for me. One that I didn't know I needed.

The efforts we make do matter. How we balance our priorities matter. Putting first things first of course is important. I have been striving to do rock-like things at the start of every day, and it's felt great! There will be days when it feels like all our rocks and pebbles pile in decently well, but other days we'll approach the end of our day and realize that all we did was fill up on sugar (uh...both figuratively and literally again this time, ha ha). On either of these days, even a last-ditch effort to shove the rocks in is worth the effort: sneaking into bedrooms to give kisses goodnight, a word of appreciation or apology, a prayer of gratitude, a walk in the cool night air, and remembering that tomorrow is a fresh start we get to start all over and try to arrange those rocks a little better.

Who cares that they don't fit perfectly. I wouldn't be able to see all that ridiculous painted detail I worked so hard on if they did.