Is it possible as we age, we get busier? My dad accused me of “wasting time” spending lazy summer days reading Gone with the Wind for hours, playing street tennis, spending entire days at Robinswood Recreation Park sunning on the lawn and swimming in 45 minute increments before the whistle blew for adult swim time.
Somehow at 63 I’ve become a productivity addict. I feel like every minute should be imbued with constructive endeavors. But that attitude is more than a little exhausting. As I’ve limped into this Memorial Day weekend, my spirit sagging from the stress of 2-3 jobs, I’m building in some pauses. Dear friends are sharing their beautiful beach place with us. Just even the sight, sound, and smell of the ocean is soothing my spirit. Susan cooked us breakfast this morning. She swears it is a labor of love to care for others. I’m allowing myself to be cared about and for. It’s hard for me to accept the generosity of others. In a previous post I talked about being a people pleaser. Part of the plight of the people pleaser is perfection and a seeming inability to accept things from others. I’m so tired, I have little choice this weekend but to accept, even welcome this caring.
Peter Beagle wrote in The Last Unicorn..
“When I was alive, I believed-as you do- that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 1:00 as though I could see it, and “Monday” as though I could find it on a map…Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year’s Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through walls”.
I love that line..”Now I know that I could have walked through walls”. We suffer from invisible (or maybe sometimes not so invisible) constraints preventing us from taking control over our own time. Thoreau wrote extensively about capturing control over one’s life. “To effect the quality of your day is the highest of arts” he said.
We needn’t be prisoners of time. According to Robert Levine in The Geography of Time, people who have time, who go to the movies in the middle of the work day or go on a 6 month sabbatical are temporal, they own their own time, not letting time own them.
So, I plan to “waste some time” this weekend, how about you?
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