The Paradox of Time

You have plenty of time. You are also running out of time, all the time.

Big Ben at the Palace at Westminster, London (from my visit in July 2022)

Happy Sunday evening, Friends! I hope this little note in your inbox finds you softening in anticipation of the week that lies ahead, whatever it might bring for you.

Softening? You might ask yourself.

Yes.

Softening.

Releasing (my furrowed brow and my frustration).

Dropping the resistance.

I often tell myself I need to put on my armor for the week ahead, be ready for anything, gather every ounce of strength I have to face whatever fight is coming. I feel fear start to creep into my mind and heart and hands and immediately do my best to deny this sensation is showing up and will myself to feel completely calm instead. I spend precious time that I could be taking action to help support myself on ruminating and coming up with reasons why I can’t do said supportive task, or if I do get myself working on it, convincing myself why it won’t be good enough.

Spoiler: none of the aforementioned strategies for getting rid of discomfort and anticipating disaster actually succeed in vanquishing these not-so-desirable emotions once and for all.

Elizabeth Gilbert once wrote, “I've never seen any life transformation that didn't begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.”

I hope I’m at that point, Friends. Truly, I do. I’ve begun reading You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, inspired by a friend, because I feel compelled to learn how to drop the ever familiar resistance to whatever emotions are arising in the present moment and surrendering to whatever this moment (and the next) brings. I’m not experimenting with softening and releasing resistance because I fancy myself a Buddha-to-be. Quite the contrary. I am desperate to loosen my grip and do what I can not to contribute so generously to my own suffering. I’m willing to see if there might be another way to experience day to day life, if for no other reason than I’ve tried bracing and clinging and preparing for disaster around every corner for most of my life, and it’s left me exhausted.

So, while I’m still nursing some stubbornness about whether or not softening is the way to gain more peace, I’m willing to try another way to walk about the world. A way that will not leave me preparing for perpetual battles and free up more of my spirit to experience the pleasure that’s available in every moment so that I can create things that bring me delight, connect with people I love, and leave some room for adventure along the way.

By saying all this “aloud” in this tiny corner of the internet, to all of you, my hope is that I will stick with the experiment long enough to see if it makes a difference in how I respond to discomfort, fear, and feelings of not being good enough. I’ll certainly check in with you along the way, writing reflections about what I notice and learn. It’s an experiment. We shall see what happens.

This week, I’m excited to share an essay from my book The Perpetual Visitor: A Field Guide for Everyday Artists with you. I wrote this collection of essays as a kind of love letter to a life spent expressing yourself through creativity and play. It has reflections, prompts, original illustrations, and creative experiments for you to try, and it’s currently on sale over at Amazon this week, so if you are interested, feel free to head over via the link above and get yourself a paperback or Kindle copy.

May you have a slightly softer week, Friends. And in the absence of armor, I hope that your skin is thin enough to have something special sink right into your soul to remind you of how much meaning and magic hide beneath each moment.

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The Paradox of Time

You must realize that you have plenty of time. 

Time to think about what it is that you really want to do in your life, what you want to contribute to your community, your world. Time to consider what it is that will bring you joy. Wonder. Energy. Curiosity. Time to experience the deep desire to keep exploring the truly singular life you are leading on this planet we all call home. Time to consider what makes you feel alive, what dampens your spirit, how to motivate yourself to keep going even on days when you feel like pulling over to the side of the road and stopping, forever. 

Too often, we are pressured to hurry. When we graduate from high school, we are asked by everyone we know, it seems, “What are you going to study in college?” There are so many assumptions here. The first is that we are going to college, that we can afford to and that we even want to. The second assumption is that there is no time to stop, to think, to explore, to consider. What do we want to do? To make? To bring into being? We must choose NOW, we’re told. There’s no time to pause and there won’t be a time to change your mind. “Hurry up!” they say.

You must realize that you have plenty of time. 

You must realize that there is time to be curious about the world around you, about the role you want to play in it. Don't rush the process of getting to know yourself as the best friend you will ever have and be patient when things you want to improve on or make or learn about take time. They will, and there is plenty of time. These things can't be rushed. 

Take time to follow your trail of curiosity wherever it may lead you. You might see a painting in a museum and find yourself checking out a library book about Hilma af Klint.  A week later you may visit another art gallery, only to find that you want to try to paint yourself. Or not. None of this journey is wasted. You don't have to be an expert at your art NOW. You don't even have to know what you want to make right now. Take the time to keep working it out. It will be worth it.

You must also realize that time is short and you are running out of time, all the time. 

You might spend a couple of hours on Facebook each day, telling yourself that "one of these days" you'll read a book or write a poem with that time instead. But if you keep up the habit of spending a fair amount of time on social media day after day, that “one day” will never come. Please don't let yourself get to the end of your life (or the end of your today) wishing you had made something magnificent to share with the world instead of having looked through an acquaintance's photos of her child's first birthday party. 

There is no time to lose. If you know who you love, what you love to do, and what you want to explore through your creativity, then DO IT. If you don't know who or what you love to do or what you want to explore, but have an urge to find out, GO FIND OUT. I once researched my family tree and was absolutely floored by the sight of names, birth date and death dates in front of me on my computer screen. I was in awe of the fact that each one of these dear people breathed and loved and worked and feared and dreamed just like I do in this very moment and that all that life fit into the small dash between the two dates. Their time was finite and so is mine. So it yours. Someday I will be a name and birth date and death date on my family's tree and I want the small dash in between those two dates to have been filled with wonder and zest and courage and aliveness.

As Ethan Hawke's character Jesse says in Richard Linklater's film Before Sunset, "I mean, this is it! This is actually happening. What do you think is interesting, what do you think is funny, what do you think is important? You know, every day is our last."

The paradox of time lies in there being a finite number of minutes in the day (1440, in case you were wondering) and that each one of those minutes can become timeless when we give ourselves the gift of exploring and making and connecting with someone or something that we love. 

The paradox continues when we consider whether we need to focus on cultivating special, set aside time for making things or if we should instead aim to bring creativity into any spare moment we can find through our day to day schedules. As is often the case with things in life that we try and wrestle to fit into a single box, I believe that the best practice likely lies in trying a hybrid approach, somewhere between these two ends of the spectrum. Rather than a golden rule that we can rely on time after time, I think that being present in the moment and allowing yourself to examine each situation as it arises will allow you to make the best choice about how to create and play in that moment.