The other afternoon, I was talking to a friend who mentioned feeling overwhelmed. I believe the exact quote was something like “I have too much on my plate”. In short, the implication was that they had a “full plate”.
Like too many parents (statistically mothers more often than fathers), having a “full plate” meant that they were running around non-stop trying to do everything and be everything to anyone and everyone – even those whom they had only an introductory relationship. From giving their employer more than the contracted 8 hours to trying to carve out time for their children to caring for children unrelated to them to sparing time and change for any less fortunate person, they attempt to serve everyone – everyone that is but themselves.
Without exception at the end of each week they are totally wiped out, often feeling unappreciated or underappreciated. Exhausted because they constantly pile more things on the plate without finishing the things already on their plate. It’s as if they were having dinner at some never-ending buffet. The minute you think that you are done eating a server comes by and piles more stuff on your plate.
They are able to get a short respite from dealing with a “full plate”. Although the relief generally lasts from Friday night to Saturday morning. Weekends seem to exist exclusively so that they can diet slightly from the full plate. Like the person who literally gorges out on one full plate after another full plate, they too are reminded that all these full plates are diminishing the quality and reducing the quantity of their life. By Sunday afternoon, the plate is piled high again with reminders of all the expectations of the coming week.
The employer demanding X, the children needing Y, my family expecting Z and so on and so on and so on… Does this sound familiar? If you think that I am talking about you and simply not saying your name in an effort to protect the innocent, you are correct. You are the person with the “full plate”.
A Full Plate
For the record, I think you should know that is commendable how much you are willing to invest in everything for everyone. However, as admirable a quality that it might be to want to be everything to everyone and deny your own welfare, I can’t help but wonder what message we send our children when we live each day as the poster child for a “full plate”. Yes, you are the poster child for the consummate overcommitted – running around like a chicken with your head cut off – person. All you have to do is Google “full plate” and you will better understand what I am saying.
Did you do it? Did you Google the words “full plate”? Yep that’s you in Wikipedia right under the words “full plate”. As usual, you have that typical disheveled, anxiety riddled, hurried look all over your face. You know the look that says I didn’t have time to eat breakfast or lunch, exercise, meditate, pray, etc. because I had so much on my “plate”.
When we don’t take care of ourselves what kind of role model are we? What type of model do you believe we provide for our sons and daughters when our life consists of having a plate that is always full, overflowing, piled high with a never-ending list of requirements and expectations?
Now What Exactly Is a Full Plate?
In case, you are still having a hard time conceptualizing the expression “full plate, think of how you and most of your relatives eat during family get togethers like the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Generally, your plate is piled so high and stuffed with so much food that every food item touches and even blends into the adjoining dish. The juice from the greens spill over into the macaroni and cheese. The cranberry sauce spills over onto the stuffing. The candied yams spill over into the coleslaw. Your plate is so crowded that if the food on your plate could talk, each item would complain to the other about not having enough room to breathe.
This plate figuratively represents your life. This out of control, tremendously overindulgent plate is symbolic of the life that you knowingly and willingly choose to live. Each morning you awake believing that there are things that ONLY you can do and that MUST all be done simultaneously. Every evening when you attempt to rest, you do so with a disquieted mind knowing that the moment you wake the new day will begin just as the previous day ended – another full plate of must do things awaiting the only person in the whole wide world capable of doing them – YOU!
Glutton for Punishment
There is good news, I guess. You are not alone. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective, your life is not atypical of most parents. More often than not the majority of parents are just like you – living a life of the never-ending “full plate”. Living a life that is carelessly spiraling out of control. Your life is so out of control that you inadvertently think out of control is normal.
In fact, if your figurative life plate were a real plate, we would call you Porky, Arnold, Squeaky or some other common name of a pig. Why would we call you a pig? Simple because only a pig, a glutton, would pile their plate full and binge the way you literally do when eating at those family gatherings. In this rhetorical case, like the swine splurging at the trough, you have become an old-fashioned glutton for punishment. Truly, you are like the most insane pig. You keep piling your plate like the pig at the trough, all the while knowing that what you are doing is not beneficial to you mentally, emotionally or physically.
Insanity is Doing the Same Thing…
Some might say that you are crazy that you have to be insane. Why else would you eagerly accept the burdens and difficulties that you so willingly tolerate? Why else would you pile your plate so high each day with tasks and duties that leave you little chance to experience the true meaning of life? Why else would you limit enjoying your life to weekends and those two weeks a year that you are out of the office known as vacation? Why else would you spend little time taking care of your own spiritual, mental and emotional health? Why do you look older than you care to look? Why are you still caring around twenty pounds of baby weight when your child was born twenty years ago and you are not even a member of the gender capable of having a baby? Why do you blame age and gravity because parts that once stood out and up now sag and fall down? Why do you continue to make excuses and sabotage yourself from looking the way you want to look? Why do you deny what you see when you look at yourself naked in the mirror? Why? Because you are a glutton for punishment.
Trust me when I tell you this, only an insane glutton for punishment lives this way. Only a parent who wants their children to duplicate their misguided consumption pattern lives this way. Only a parent who wants children who will have no time for them in their senior years lives this way. Only a parent who wants to care for and adult child or bury a child because their life was hindered or shortened from duplicating your routine of always believing that your plate had to be “full”. Only a parent who looks forward to hearing their grandchild (on the rare occasion that your children have time to visit) complain about the lack of time and interest your children have in your grandchildren’s life’s lives this way.
Go On a Diet
It’s time to change. In the spirit of the late night infomercial, I want you to know that you don’t have to be the insane pig forever. Luckily, a cure now exists and is readily available so that you don’t have to suffer the ill effects of a “full plate” running around like a chicken with your head cut off forever. As with other out of whack consumption habits and addictions, you can remedy your spiraling out of control life by simply going on a diet. In the next post, I’ll share with you a few adjustments that you can make to clean your plate and put your head back on.
Am I approaching each day the same way that I want my child to live their adult life?