Good morning everyone! If you are new, welcome! And, to everyone else, I'm glad to be back after some time away. I've missed our weekly conversations!
Do you ever find yourself watching the clock out of sheer boredom? Do you ever find yourself wondering how you are going to make it through a long hard day? Do you ever find yourself counting the days until ___ happens feeling like life is going in slow motion until then?
If so, you know what it is like to wrestle- at least in a negative sense-- with our word of this week, time.
Time defined as the point or period when something occurs.
I think when I was younger, I was all about rushing through things. Maybe you were too? I couldn't wait to be 16 so I could drive myself to school. I couldn't wait to be 18 and a voter. I couldn't wait to rent a car on my own at 25!
But these days, I long for a different relationship with time. I notice how fast my children's interests change and how quickly I must adapt to the new versions of their becoming. I notice loved ones noticeably age and talk to me about the time when "they won't be here anymore." I notice how anything I build in community life is temporary-- the wind can always blow people to new opportunities far away. All of these things are normal and to be expected, of course, but it doesn't mean I have to like it! (Because I don't).
Time in the biggest picture can be oh so frustrating. It can be oh so disheartening!
Maybe this is why reading the artist, Kai Skye' words this week struck me so. "I used to imagine the future all the time but I'd get so busy trying to make it turn out like that that I'd completely miss all the ways real life was going off in a different direction doing things that sounded a lot more fun."
There are so many ways in a week that you and I try to control, manipulate, achieve with time exactly what we think we want. But what if you and I stopped all that?
What if you did as Kai suggests and just took life as it comes? What if you turned off your brains more to "making things happen" and instead accepted with gratitude whatever your days became?
Now, I know for the type A's in the room, the go-getters, such an encouragement might fall flat. You like to goal-set. You like to have your plans. You like things as you like them.
But I have to think so much of our agony over time comes from looking back too much and looking forward too much and not enough being in the present tense.
So today, try this with me: name something or someone that makes you brim over with gratitude. Connect with that. And when your head hits the pillow tonight, know you lived a day. A good day because of that. And it's enough for now.
XO
Elizabeth
P.S. I am so excited to share the new "look" of my website with you and all of the archives of Word of the Week on one page for your reading pleasure! Take a look and see what you think.
