Identifying what’s most important

By Jeff Becraft

I finally got another car. The car I was driving, which has been a fantastic car, was fifteen years old and had over 316,000 miles on it. I would still be driving it if I were just running around town… but running up and down the interstate to see family and to various camps and whatnot, I knew I was really pushing the envelope.

Normally, I drive a car until you have to drag it away. We once had a blue Honda that got towed by every towing company in Columbia. They knew me on a first name basis. One night after a Christmas chapel service at Carolina Children’s Home, I pulled into our driveway and smoke was just pouring out from underneath the hood. My wife comes out and tells me to turn off the car. I hold up the key and say to her, “I did.” The car is still running with smoke pouring out of it. To which she responded, “That’s it… you need to get another car.”

This time around, however, I decided to make a proactive move before it died out and get a car that was more reliable. In doing so, I had to clear out my old car… which I did the other week.

And when I say I cleaned out my car, I mean I cleaned everything out of my car. Believe it or not, I had four bags (these are the plastic bags like you get in a grocery store) filled with stuff. I had pens (I don’t even want to tell you how many pens I had), I had napkins, I had paper towels, I had more napkins. I had things that people had given me over time that I didn’t know what to do with. I found all kinds of things just stuffed in my glove compartment (I had never emptied it out). I had things stuffed in the side doors. I had stuff stuffed in the middle compartment between the seats. I had stuff in the trunk.

So I cleared out four bags of stuff that had been there for a long, long time. Now, all this stuff, at one point apparently, was very important. But… I had traveled a lot of miles and lived a lot of days and had never used most of this stuff. I didn’t even know it was in there.

And so the stuff that I thought was so important at one point really wasn’t that important. It wasn’t the greatest need in my life.

For me, at least, there are times I can get caught up with everything that’s going on in life and all the stuff that might look so important and I might miss what’s most important.

So, it is good sometimes to really evaluate what is taking up all our time and what is taking up all our focus in our lives and think about what really is most important. There are a lot of things (and some of them good things) that weigh us down. We need to clear some of that stuff out and hang on to what is most important.

Because the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

Jeff Becraft is the Director of Our Place of Hope and the Director Emeritus for Youth Corps and has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. Our Place of Hope is a paradigm shift for people living with mental illness that encourages them to regain meaning, purpose, and hope for their lives. You can connect with Jeff at  [email protected].