How is it mid-April already? The teacher in me has the daily countdown that rings at the end of each day like an antique cash register bell to mark another day done and behind me. 16 school days until the AP exam. 24 days of school left. I need the slow pace of summer to restore my sanity, and it feels good to know I’m closer everyday. But the price I pay for that is counting the days away instead of living in them or loving them.
To use internet meme slang, this is my toxic trait. My Achilles heel. The thing I know I shouldn't do, but I can’t stop doing it. I rule my life by the clock and the calendar and the checklists in my head, and then I’m always waiting for something, always counting down to reach something in front of me. Always dreaming and wishing and planning and rarely still. I think I forget sometimes that stillness is not stagnation. Time has been on my mind lately– the quality of it, the ephemeral nature of it, and the way I so often approach it as my enemy. Both the racing and the waiting lead me to miss what’s in front of my face and forget that this is now. Inside my brain is a calendar, and in case I lose sight of that one (never), there’s one in my phone and one on my kitchen wall. And on and on it goes during the school year until that schedule abruptly halts and my summer self can settle into some place that feels like it’s beyond time, beyond the reach of others’ demands of me, and sometimes even beyond the reach of my own demands, too.
The last time I had a night without the kids, I watched Perfect Days, and it’s so gorgeously done and poignant that I have a hard time writing about it here except to tell you to make time to see it. It was such a quietly beautiful movie, understated and true, somehow both comforting and haunting. For me, it quieted so many fears I have that I’m not filling my years with enough or not reaching some potential I envisioned for myself. It speaks to the profound beauty of a simple life and the potential each of our days hold if we pay attention. The cinematography is alluring and the use of music in the film is great, but there’s just something about the simplicity of it that held me close to it from beginning to end. There’s an incredible moment when the main character and his niece are bicycling in the haze of dusk and repeating over and over next time is next time, now is now, a phrase the screenplay earns the right to include without cliche because the film illustrates the beauty of presence so perfectly. Now is now is now is now. Why is that so easy to forget?
Most of the time, I feel the relentless hum of guilt when I just let time pass without anything to show for it. (Is that a me thing or a mom thing or a teacher thing or a capitalism thing?) I have to make an effort to turn that volume down. I have this feeling, not just that I should be doing something productive, but also that time has somehow forgotten me, rushed past me, that it will leave me behind if I’m not using it. All those carpe diem messages of the old poets. Had we but world enough and time … gather ye rosebuds while ye may … at my back, I always hear time’s winged chariot drawing near. They are meant to inspire us, and that used to work as an engine for me, but it doesn’t work that way for me anymore. Our days are limited, and I know this. But that is not always a fact that spurs me to action in a way that feels good. Instead it can make me feel frenzied, hurried, frantic, and still somehow behind. I don’t need a reminder to act and to run. I need someone to tell me to slow down.
My favorite yoga class at my studio is the Sunday morning one. It’s a warm flow, meaning not a true hot yoga class but a vinyasa flow in a room just a bit warmer than what’s comfortable. The teacher always brings scented and frozen cloths from home and they thaw as we practice together so that they’re ready and waiting for us when the class ends. When we are finally lying in savasana, limbs heavy and tired from an hour of movement, she walks around the room and one by one, she lays a cold cloth in our hands or on our heads. My favorite moment is not just when the cloth meets my warm skin, but the few seconds she gently presses her thumb where she’s about to place the cloth and then holds her hand there on top of it with the tiniest bit of pressure. It’s the sensation of touch, the intentional pause of her hand, the brief second of forced stillness weighing on me as I weigh on the floor itself. It pins me to the floor and to the moment in a tangible way I need. I try to remember that feeling when I’m far away in my head in future-planning mode or racing the clock or feeling behind. Like a pin on a map. You are here. Not there. Pause where you are.
One way age is changing me is that I’m finally beginning to see that not only is it okay to sometimes let an hour pass without a task completed but that time is my ally and not my enemy. All these years, I’ve felt like time was a thief, a racing chariot, a slave driver, some non-negotiable dictate I have to answer to. But here’s what I’m beginning to see instead: time is a gift, my ally, my guide, the ingredient missing when I can’t understand why something isn't working. If I’m wrestling with a piece of writing I’m stuck on, or an unanswerable question in my head, placing it on the shelf doesn’t make it spoil or pass me by like I always feared it would. Time clarifies, it illuminates, it is never wasted. Sometimes I don’t need time to clarify anything. I’ve accepted jobs I knew were right for me immediately, encountered people I knew I’d love from the moment I met them, written paragraphs that poured out of me in seconds without effort. But I’ve also had jobs and relationships and writing that began with a tiny seed and took a long time to grow, and they were never any less beautiful in the end than what emerged immediately. All too often I forget that time has never once harmed what was real and true, instead it only separates the truth from the rest like sand in a sieve.
Years ago, I heard it said that the truth has legs and that the way you know what’s true is that when everything else in the room sits down, the truth is left standing. I’ve never forgotten that image, and that definition of truth has never failed me. What I’m learning is that sometimes to let it stand, you have to give everything else time to settle and sit down so that you can see it. For me, that means waiting, having the courage to let time pass, resisting the urge to hurry something along. Take a pause and let it be.
Last Sunday morning, craving a reset button, I packed my lunch, a book, and my tree hammock when I left for yoga so that I could drive straight to the lake from the studio. When I got there, I found my two favorite trees in my familiar spot and tied the hammock on. I took my shoes off and laid down and let the breeze and the silence settle around me as I gazed out at the shimmering water. It didn’t take long at all for me to drop into that place - you know the one - where it feels like you’re in the center of a snowglobe, like you are inside of something unnamable, a protected bubble, outside the reach of time. The place where for once I am not reaching and waiting and doing. I’m using all of these words (too many) to just say presence. Not thinking about what has passed or what might be coming, but just sitting with my own breathing self. I let time pass by stepping out of it for a moment and into the now.
When I checked my email the next day, I found an acceptance from an editor in response to a piece of writing that truly took years of work to fully germinate for me. I’m excited to see it out in the world soon, but also a little scared. It’s a more pure and unadulterated truth about a piece of my own experience I don’t often write about. I could tell you that it took years of work to complete it, but when I say “work,” what I really mean is waiting. I’d write some of it and feel stuck and place it on the shelf, then months later remember some experience that related to it and come back to write again. I let life happen to me, and in that time, this writing steeped like tea in hot water so that what I have in the end is what was left standing– a more potent truth I could only come to with the help of time and the courage to let it pass without hurry.
What I wish for in this next decade of my life is the grace to live like that more often. Maybe I do have world enough and time to create the life I want because I’m already living it if I pause to see what’s in front of me. I want to lean into the belief that I can take a break and let it be and life has not forgotten me. Pages will not spoil if I leave them on a shelf, my questions won’t remain unanswered forever, and the truth will always stand up for me to see it if I give it time. Or to use another poet’s voice, to know with certainty that what I seek is seeking me if I give it time to find me.
I adored Perfect Days. I watched it a few days after deciding to quit my editing work because I'd been too sick to function as a human. It found me at a time where my days were filled staring at walls or walking the dog and throwing out flower seeds in the yard and wondering when I'd get my body back and feeling like all this time was wasted, or that I was worth less, for not contributing because I wasn't "producing." The movie was such a simple reminder of grace and presence and that we really don't need that much to susain ourselves outside of our daily rituals and self-care. It certainly made me feel better about stepping away from work for a few months to recover and regain footing. I think so much of that pressure to produce comes from capitalism and is magnified by social media, as production is incessantly in our faces (and it doesn't help if we're prideful and are taught that what is valuable = product, not life itself). That, combined with being a woman and a mother and the expectations that befall that identity and what one is supposed to be. It's just so much.
Rilke's been my boy when it comes to rekindling my relationship with time, to "live questions" and "live into the answers" suggests that it's all a process, not a product. Time is such a teacher if we're present for it, which can be a challenge these days. Process pedagogy for lifeeeeee.
Congrats on the editor!