Spending Time With Friends and Family is Priceless

Spending Time With Friends and Family is Priceless

There is a lot to be said about spending time with family. Time is often said to be a rare commodity, and is to be valued.

The highlight of my evening is that I went for a meal last night. It was not planned, but was, rather, impromptu. My cousin had arrived from USA since last Thursday, and was bound to return on an early flight tomorrow, Wednesday. She was staying with my cousin from Ireland who is her sister, and cousin from Ireland’s family, which is about an hour away from me. I remember that we had talked about it for while, before cousin from USA actually arrived for this trip, and had planned a few things in advance. 

 

Time does tend to creep in quickly on you, leaving you wondering where it disappeared to in the end. Sunday was meant to be our first outing, but other events sort of overtook this plan. Things always seem to have a way of hijacking your time, if one is not careful. Sunday went by, and although a bit unhappy about missing that outing, there was not much one could do about it.

Of course, work takes over the week days. You start at 8am and end a 8pm when you are running your own business. You can’t ask anyone for overtime pay. It’s times like this that you really wish that someone else was paying for your time. So, you tell yourself that you need to put in much more, in order to get much more value out of the business. Sunday came and went, as did Monday. I have not been able to blog about anything. As a matter of fact, my mind keeps drawing a blank every time I think of what to write. A few items come to mind, but at the end of the day on Monday, after dinner, I found that I had slept off on the sofa. Writing will have to be on another day. The left over food had even dried up in the plate as I got up to take the plates to re-adjust myself. An outing on a busy Tuesday evening is the last thing on my mind.

However, we had agreed (cousin from Ireland and I), that we would make the visit of cousin from USA, as eventful as possible. If I know my cousin from Ireland, she likes to leave no stone unturned. So, just as I was ending my teaching session late on Tuesday, this call came from cousin from Ireland. The children and herself, were here in Dublin, with cousin from USA. Now, what does one do when you are tired and feeling quite unsociable? You say so. Yes. That’s what I did. Did cousin from Ireland buy any of that? Nope! “We’ll just stop over “briefly”, and see you since we are in town, and the children have been saying they want to see you”. Ah! Bless her dear heart. Arm-twisting is an art, I guess. I should register for a course in subtle arm-twisting. “Erm, erm, I am really not feeling sociable. I am tired, and hungry, and need to go to bed in one hour”, were my exact words.

Thirty minutes later, we were in a Chinese restaurant, having buffet. It was my treat. After meeting with cousin from USA, I decided it wouldn’t be nice not to add this meeting to her experience of Ireland. This was about 7pm. At 11.30pm, we were just saying our goodbyes. We had taken photographs as a record of the event. But, we almost forgot the photos. We were all overfed, and had laughed and laughed, as we cracked joke upon joke. The children cracked jokes. We cracked jokes. We took swipes at the food, at the tables, the wall pictures, the car-parking (which incidentally is a 24 hour, 7 day week paid parking, apparently run by Tesco’s). They obviously don’t want us to be stopping there at anytime of the day! 

 

Anyway, as I was saying, in between meals, we talked about cousin’s cat called “Heaven”. She showed us a picture of “Heaven”. And although I can’t stand cats (being asthmatic, I cant stand animals, but I prefer dogs to cats), I felt “Heaven” was a gorgeous feline. He coat is pure white, and radiant. She has a gold eye and a blue eye. Rather uncanny. I have never seen anyone or animal with two different color eyes. But “Heaven” has two colors. You can’t say anything bad about “Heaven” if you want to stay in cousin from USA’s good books. So, I told her “Heaven” has a lovely coat (which was not a lie). 

 

You have to find something good to say about someone (or someone’s pet), to make them feel good, even if you don’t like them. One of my mentors always says that people want to hear good things about themselves. Even if it is the truth, no-one want you to tell them that they are awful horrible giant arse holes (which is what I called the guy who interrupted my teaching today, for more than 30 minutes, just to annoy me). Anyway, when cousin from USA goes back now, she will go home to “Heaven”, and she was very delighted about it, although she enjoyed our company.

Well, I was recounting the whole episode to my cousin in England last night, and she commented that the “highlight of the message, is that I went out for a meal”, and that I should do this more often. She hoped I had wine as well. But if I had had wine, both cousin from USA and cousin from Ireland and the children would have had to carry me inside the house, ‘cos I would have been as drunk as a skunk. 

 

Well, it was a great privileged to spend a bit of my time with my family last night. I can’t actually remember how long ago I had this experience last. Taking time out of a busy schedule is a very rewarding vocation, and quite important. The rewards cannot really be quantified. We cannot buy the laughter, the jokes, the bonding and closeness that comes with it, as we sat there, making fun of each other, and the quantities of food we ate, it became apparent, that we must find the time to do this again, sometime very soon, as it helps us to grow in affection. 

 

Yes, we paid for the food, but what we have all taken away from the time together, is priceless.

Princess YinkaDixon

 

 

first published by me as Power2win on July 25, 2012, while a member of the Empower Network