Summer Goals {CELEBRATE This Week: 196}

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! 

Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

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This summer I've decided to be completely inspired by Lin Yutang and his words:

“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live”

This is a counter-cultural decision. The world tells us if we're busy, we're living right. 

I don't want to be busy.

I'm discovering it's a battle to find useless afternoons to spend in perfectly useless manners. I'm learning to fight the good fight. 

On Tuesday we were driving home from Steph's softball game and I saw The Sandlot advertised as the Retro Reel for the drive-in movie. My first thought was, It would be fun to get a group of friends to go together. 

Immediately I thought of all the reasons it wouldn't work. I thought of the hassle of arranging schedules. I thought of the risk of melt downs and ungrateful attitudes. I thought of the inevitable embarrassment of rude words and unkind actions that are guaranteed when we are around other families. I thought of the battle that always comes with a late bedtime. 

I thought of the space between what I used to dream for our family and what the reality is for turning darkness to light for kids who come from hard places.

Then I thought about Sam and his buddies. "The Guys" is a fluid group of fun loving kids. They're rare in their joy and their uncanny ability to include rather than exclude others. 

I decided to fight back and find a perfectly useless way to spend an evening. I figured since "The Guys" are awesome, they probably have cool parental units. I sent a text out to 7 moms telling them about the drive-in movie. Anyone in? I asked.

We all have to learn to fight busy.

We ended up with 6 carloads heading to the drive-in to spend an evening in a perfectly useless manner. There was a ragtag game of football and frisbee and kickball. We shared watermelon and Twizzlers and popcorn.

Little did I know we were living out the lessons from The Sandlot, a movie all about the power of perfectly useless afternoons spent in perfectly useless manners. This is where real living happens. 

Just like in the movie the themes of learning to live run deep. Good things happen when you are brave enough invite a new kid to play. You almost always have to leave your house to make friends. Rarely are things what they seem. And don't overthink it -- just keep trying. 

This summer I'm determined to spend more perfectly useless afternoons (or days or nights) in perfectly useless manners. In the end, I think all of the perfectly useless choices of how to spend the summer will turn out to be the wisest investment any of us could make.

Happy summer! I hope you, too, will choose to spend some perfectly useless afternoons in a perfectly useless manner. Here's to living life to the fullest! Share your celebrations below. 

My newest book is getting closer to publication. Check out this free eBook I put together that highlights 7 Leaps of Faith (and 35 Moves to Make) to use with hard-to-reach writers.