Life: there is no app for that…

My colleagues are excited because there is a new app for finding child care in Kentucky. A new item on my paid work to do list is to figure out how we would do something similar for Minnesota. It would be possible to build a mobile website with almost identical functionality, but that wouldn't have the newsworthiness…the packaging...the glamour of an app.

We look for others to simplify our choices, gather things together and give us step-by-step instructions. It's easier that way, but is it better?

About ten days ago I was ambushed by a head cold. My sweetly regulated life went out the window while I spent time with the Kleenex box. No work. No exercising. No grocery shopping. All my habits…good and bad…went out the window.

I could tell I was getting better when I started noticing how dirty the floors were, when I started feeling guilty about what wasn't getting done. Guilt as a sign of health...sheesh!

The experience was, however, a good reminder of how life works:

• life is full of the unexpected
• life is frequently messy
• life includes complicated choices
• life comes at us in little pieces…we can choose to find wholeness
• instructions may be helpful, but are never complete or sufficiently customized

There is, in short, no app for living.  Using apps (or their old-fashioned equivalents: kits, how-to books, other people's advice)  may make specific tasks easier but may rob us of rich experience.

Making our own choices, finding our own way, living our own lives we move into deep, authentic being.