All the time in the world

“Rejoice! Rejoice! We have no choice but to carry on.” - Stephen Stills

There’s a tension that I experience on a frequent basis. It’s between the necessity of slowing down and allowing space for reflection and growth, and the reality that the clock is ticking.

I don’t do my best work dangling by my fingertips off of a precipice. I need to be peaceful, grounded, and safe.

And yet these are the same conditions that can lead to complacency — to doing nothing and letting the time simply pass by.

It is easy enough to fill a day with meals, laundry, and a walk in the fresh air — maybe a bit of bill-paying, family time, or creative work. And the next, and the next.

I could push harder and do more. I could finish more projects, help more people, learn more new things, try to reach my goals faster. But who’s to say that it’s a better way to live, especially if it leads to a perennial dissatisfaction with how things are and what I’m able to achieve?

My father’s best high school friend died of cancer last November. For months, my dad had gone to visit him, thirty minutes away, every day. I was able to visit a couple of times, too. He had an estranged son and an ex-wife and a cousin. He was broke and pretty lonely. This was his second bout with cancer — the first round took his larynx. At one point, he looked at my father and mouthed the words, “So this is it?”

Life. We can console ourselves during the pandemic that someday it will be over and we can once again travel and go to parties freely. But for millions, life never returned to normal. They’re gone. My dad’s friend missed the whole thing. Exited stage left, no more scenes.

These thoughts could be depressing. I choose to see them as liberating. Taking the long view, it doesn’t matter if I achieve something meaningful or check off all of the little tasks on my to do list or take a series of naps. I’ll eventually run out of time no matter what. What’s important — to me — is my relationship with God, a higher power, my inner wisdom, whatever you would like to call it. It’s more important than family (because not all of us get to have one) and legacy (because not all of us will be remembered). It’s definitely more important than whatever I’ve got cooked up to try to feel safely productive today.

Yesterday, I took a ball of yarn and a crochet hook and sat in the sun and crocheted for awhile (yes, I decided to learn to crochet after all). It’s the kind of choice I wouldn’t normally make on a weekday afternoon, when even working from home has a fast pace and I’m bound to be missing something. But there are only so many warm sunny afternoons left this year…and more chillingly, there are only so many warm sunny afternoons I have left. I can spare the twenty minutes, finding joy and peace in the present moment.

Truthfully, I can also find joy and peace responding to Slack messages and emails. None of it is better, necessarily — not more useful or more spiritual or more meaningful. It can’t be. If your time consists of sitting in a hospital bed, your days of going outside now over, that’s the only experience you have left to find meaning in — at least, if you want to find meaning. Maybe you don’t have to.

Today, a beloved aunt turns eighty. That’s an accomplishment in itself. One of her most important accomplishments was to make the choice, at age thirty-six, to turn away from a family legacy of alcoholism. A new life began at that point. Despite traumatic losses, she’s not the old, sad great-grandma living in the house full of memories. Just a few years ago, she moved to a new house — perhaps some other grandma’s old, sad house, right down to the nautical wallpaper — and renovated it to her specifications. No one has to go do their duty and visit her. She’s vibrant and joyful. She’s stepped away from suffering and learned to thrive, even during the pandemic. She knows what matters to her and focuses on that.

I could say that if I’m lucky, I will get to have that someday. But that’s not true. It is a choice, and it is one that I can make today. I can worry about the passing of time and try to fit more into the moment. Or I can accept the moment for exactly what it is, understanding that I don’t have control over any of the long-term outcomes I might seek.

I have all the time in the world. Right now, at least. And it’s enough.