Making time
June 2, 2008I treat life as though it’s a race.
I have always done so. I’ve always been on this treadmill running towards some vanishing point on the horizon. This point was always academia – finishing high school with the best scores I could (graduating second, for which I still feel shame and annoyance at myself), getting my university degree, then honours, then a PhD.
The universe laughed at me, I think, six years ago when I boarded a plane for the US. Little did I know that would be the last time I would be capable of running full pelt for anything. I left this country one person and came back someone completely different. Someone disabled.
I limped through my PhD, forcing myself to complete what many others probably would have given up on. I went straight from study onto a disability pension. I haven’t worked a formal job or study since.
And yet I haven’t stopped running.
It doesn’t matter if I only have the strength to limp along, I’m still on that treadmill heading towards that point on the horizon. Where it really is, I don’t know. I’m writing, so somewhere in there is publication and all that it entails.
I still want to pursue that, but I am tired of running headlong.
As such, one of the challenges I’m issuing myself is to try to slow down. To actually meditate properly everyday, rather than just thinking about it (and considering it wasted time when I could be doing something).
It’s not wasted time. And I do have the benefit of flexibility to take the time to meditate. Even if it’s five minutes a day.
Slow down. Relax. And just be. And see what happens.
I have just finished writing a written journal entry on the exact same topic. My difference is that I wasn’t able to finish my education. But from there to here, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
While I am not at all ok with getting sick, I am quite astounded at the life I have had to begin living. Who I am now, sick, is nothing like who I would have been had it never happened. I never would be a writer or photographer or knitter. When I stop measuring myself with the old yard stick, I’m a more complete person now, even with the holes health invariably makes. Just a thought.
I recently finished Year of Living Biblically, and one of the author’s spiritual advisors posed a question to him: There was a man who had a lot of time, who planned out and prepared and prayed many minutes each day. There was another man who was rushed and always busy, and the best he could do was to run to the broom closet at his work for about five minutes each day to pray. “Which prayers,” asked the advisor “do you think meant more?”
He said it was the frazzled five-minute guy’s prayers, because although he had less time to give, it was more of a sacrifice.
(I need to pray and meditate more as well.)