The skink photos are wonderful. Re your musings about how to spend your time, I recommend a book titled “4000 weeks”. The author has a point of view much like yours, and seems to give permission for us to spend our time as we please. Of course, understanding what it is that pleases us is often elusive.
Thanks for weighing in, Darrell, and for the book recommendation. I've placed a hold for the audio version from the library app. It's a 17 week wait, so clearly a popular title right now! Hope all is well in your world.
Marvelous magic in the garden! Nothing compares to the natural world and we're part of it with this amazing gift of deciding how to spend our time. Love your photos too! You take me right to Mary Oliver's "Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." And this from Annie Dillard in "The Writing Life." "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order- -willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living."
Thanks, Elizabeth. You enriched my morning immensely and I'll be looking for more of these gems. BTW, I am currently reading "Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin and the Dawn of Modern Science" by Renée Bergland.
Thank you so much, Gary. This is a rich comment. I so appreciate the kind words and the quotes, one of which lives in my head on repeat (Mary Oliver) and one which I'm glad to be reminded of. I will look for "Natural Magic." Sounds like the sort of book I'd really enjoy!
Absolutely loved every bit of this post, Elizabeth! These tiny encounters with Nature are like bits of everyday mysticism provided for us and we catch them when we can. (Unlike those skinks! But what beauties - their skin is like vinyl, not like the usual dry, crispiness one associates with lizards). I relate to so much. I also "watch" myself squandering (in my case) time, promising myself that tomorrow will be different, oh, the exercising I will do. Tomorrow. Sharing hilarious Instagram morsels to my boys can also take time but seems important, in order to maintain my "cool Mummy" status which I sincerely hope has not expired ha! Anyway, super post. I shall think of those skinks many more times and I am pleased that someone else kind of thinks like I do.
Gosh, thank you. I'm heartened to know we are on similar wavelengths here! The skink skin is much more like that of snakes (which I hesitate to mention, people feeling as they do about snakes). I'll probably work on it for the rest of my days, but I am striving towards acceptance of all the qualities I've told myself are "less than suitable" about me. Not that I can't improve, but I like to think learning to be less critical of myself will be the right path in the long run. Appreciate you being here, Sue.
Another beautiful post, Elizabeth. Thank you for a delightful read - I've been thinking a good deal about time lately, and your words have resonated with me deeply.
I live close to the forest where A A Milne set his Winnie-the-Pooh books, and the Enchanted Place is magical. The view from there is stunning, and there's a plaque with an inscription to Milne and his illustrator, E H Shepard. We last found ourselves there on Shepard's birthday - the plaque was covered with flowers.
Over 40 years since I first read 'The House at Pooh Corner' I still cannot read the last lines of it without crying. Kind of wish I hadn't sought out that web link above - because those words are right there! 🤣
How wonderful to live close to such a special place! The Pooh books are works of pure genius, and speaking of...they are timeless!...and so very poignant. I might have to reread them all soon. Grateful for your presence here, Rebecca, and if you come up with any profound time management ideas, maybe something that gives us the option for 2x as many hours some days, do let me know. :)
You “had” time to experience something wonderful! Now I “have” time to enjoy what you experienced. How can we own something that can’t be possessed, yet culturally, we seem to think we can!
Time is such a fraught notion. I’ve had some laugh out loud experiences with an old Uruguayan accountant who I finally decided never had a mother tongue and whose job was to process expense reports from my traveling staff after I approved the reports for payment.
He had habit of micro-reviewing dates on invoices and more than once, he stormed into my office and demanded to know why I approved a “600 year old” receipt (from a staff member who travelled to a country where the Islamic calendar was in use) or an “8 year old” receipt from someone who just returned from Ethiopia.
How we understand time culturally is every bit as baffling to me as were the dates on receipts for my old accountant. Although our digitalized, commoditized, globalized culture is turning the world into time hoarders like us Americans, it wasn’t always so and in many places, still isn’t so.
I am reading Alexandra Fuller’s book “Before the Rains Come” and she tells how disoriented she felt after growing up in Southern Africa and marrying an American who eventually took her home to Wyoming. She writes at length about trying to understand and adapt to the American cultural understanding of time, because even though her ethic background was European, her understanding of time was African.
In my backs and forths from country to country, I felt similar internal time-related friction and I’m not talking about jet lag. It’s easy to call it the pace of things, but that is a too simplistic explanation. I’ll just say it’s complex. Not everybody tries to “save” time or “make up for lost time.” Every culture seems to have a different understanding of whatever this thing we call time actually is.
This is so true, Switter, and such an important consideration. I've had some professional opportunities to be involved in diversity trainings, and I remember that time and how it relates to work culture being a topic of discussion in several of those, with an emphasis on how very white and Western many of our time-specific conventions are. Your story of the Uruguayan accountant is a fabulous example!
My nature (no pun intended) is to appreciate long stretches of unscheduled time. I don't get them all that often, and as mentioned here, I'm apt to fill them up - but the freedom to choose when and with what is such a gift. I also tend to run late and have for as long as I can remember. Typically not more than 5-10 minutes, but I have a lot of shame and anxiety around that. I noticed, in not so distant past, that at least one brother is the same. The funny thing is, I don't remember it affecting how people responded to him. As a kid, I got saddled with being on "me time" or "having my head in the clouds." He was just "busy."
Thanks so much for the thoughtful comment, Switter!
“I’m the one in charge, and I am, apparently, disinclined to do things differently.” I can very much relate to this, Elizabeth and the sentiments you express around it. Thanks for sharing these thoughts that helped me to feel seen and not alone!
Thank YOU, Don. If you'd asked me to guess at your natural instincts around time, I would have supposed you were someone who fit necessary tasks in between the spaciousness (if that's the right word) of your hours. The stereotypical Buddhist, right?! Now you've got me wondering which part of my sentiments you're relating to. The busy-bother, or the Nothing? 😂
In order to respond properly I just read your essay again, only this time with the unpressured stillness of the early morning on my side. That alone has taught me something. Yesterday I was feeling like I'll never again have time to read with presence, to enjoy a mind empty of swirling Substack callings. Of course, that's just silly thinking; I had a Note go viral and I've been very busy responding to everyone, but tomorrow, maybe even today, all will be calm again.
I related to your comment that you carry with you a knowledge and maybe a desire to make some sort of change but you don't do it. That is something I do. And I can go for years with some thought like that in my mind without stopping and realizing; Oh! It's because I don't really want that! (alternatively, it could be because I don't really believe I can have it).
I really liked your essay and I'm so glad I read it again today. You are a peaceful and curious person!
Don, thanks ever so much for coming back in with this very thoughtful response. I've been caught in an especially busy patch at work, so I'm later than I would have liked getting back to you.
You are right on the mark with how you've summarized things here. We are slow to change because we don't really want it...or (importantly) don't really believe we can have it. The follow-on, for me, is thinking through whether I really *need* to change, or whether I'm reflecting a cultural expectation that doesn't really serve me well.
Congrats on the viral post (💯!!!) and applause for the thoughtfulness of responding to everyone. As you might have deduced, the Big Busy has kept me off Notes altogether, so I missed the fanfare. You'll have to link me to the post.
I've got The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet on my shelves and both books are so instructive and readable, with gentle humour that inevitably strengthens the messages even more.
Curiously, I was reading The Tao of Pooh the other day and remembered how in the past, I used to call myself and dearest others as the Uncarved Blocks.
We do need to give ourselves permission to 'make time', don't we? Ah, I feel a post coming on...
Prue, I love, love, love the Hoff's idea of the Uncarved block -- well, I guess it's more the Taoist idea, but as applied to Pooh it's just so delightful! I'll have to keep my eyes open for a used copy of the Te of Piglet, although interestingly the comments for this post have generated more book recommendations (not that you were necessarily recommending) than most, so now I'll have to figure out how to make time to read them. Ha!
Hope you're doing well, Prue. Thank you so much for chiming in.
I loved this posting. I've long been identified a dreamer, A romantic,stopping to admire the "everyday sacred", much to the consternation of those I accompanied.
Currently, I watch a chipmunk, I call Gus, who sits with regularity on a small wood pile outside my kitchen window. Last summer I could sit in a deck chair a few feet from him and just observe him packing his cheeks, racing off to hide his bounty and return time and again. He appears like clockwork in early morning and late afternoon when his predators are less likely to appear. We are reestablishing comfort with proximity. These small moments bring me such pleasure.
Susan, thank you so much (and apologies for the delayed reply from me). Gus sounds delightful. Chipmunks are so cheerful. Though they live in the state, they are very uncommon where I am. I am much more likely to notice the everyday sacred, as you so elegantly put it. That may, in part, be because that is what's accessible to me. I don't travel all that much, so the Seven Wonders, and the sorts of elevated experiences some people experience in far flung places of the world, are not what comes to me. Then again, I think it's just my nature to see even small wonders as big. Appreciate you reading and commenting!
Thank you, June. Musing....yes. That's the word I need to focus on. Or, more to the point, that's the activity that reliably feeds my soul. Grateful to you for bringing it to this comment.
"I am absolute crap at living in the moment," said my client yesterday. We were talking about time management, resilience and Transcendental Meditation. This reminded me of Alan Watt's 1951 essay "Become What You Are" in which he says we can not be out of accord with the Tao of life even if we try: "You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you can not be, for you are life and exist Now - otherwise you would not be here. Hence the infinite Tao is something which you can neither escape by flight nor catch by pursuit; there is no coming toward it or going away from it; it IS, and so are you."
For what other musings, besides yours, Elizabeth, do I read and, like Don, below, re-read, and find myself pausing all other things on my to do list to ponder, and find that quote, and bring it to this community and to you? Thanks for that.
Oh, Stewart. Such a rich comment that lands exactly right for me. I've expended a lot of navel-gazing energy across my years, trying to unlock the doors to self-improvement. While there's nothing wrong with that--I want to learn and grow indefinitely--it hasn't been from a place of acceptance. Instead, my inner critic has been in the lead, my efforts tinged with judgement, shame, and unacknowledged blame: "If only I could X, then Y would be better." So disempowering!
I am humbled by your last lines, Stewart, and also genuinely grateful to know that the story of my two visitors gave you permission to pause. Thank you for bringing your thoughts, and that quote, here!
So much of this post speaks to me, and I love the permission you're giving me to live a more lizardly life. This really struck me: "In the context of my working life, which I expect to maintain for as long as I can, I often wish for fewer commitments and more control over my schedule." I spent years wishing for the same thing, and then, finally, I was in a place to do something about it. And I did! I renegotiated agreements about labor and money with my husband, and I retired from being a public school educator. And guess what? I STILL don't have time to do all that I want. I still spend too much of mine thinking about time, lamenting time, wondering about time. Don't get me wrong: My life is transformed in wonderful ways and I am so grateful for the changes I've been able to make. Truly. But I still have to wrestle with questions about how to best live, and it's hard to change the habits of more than 40 years (having started working for a paycheck at 15). I appreciate the reminders in this piece of what I know, can so easily forget, and am slowly learning how to live accordingly: It's enough to be. Being is doing. There is enough time now for all that matters, and sometimes what matters is just being with others (humans and non-humans), resting, and paying attention. Loved this week's essay.
We do tend to align, don't we, Rita? Thank you, as always, for sharing your experiences with (I don't like this term, really, but...) time management, and for affirming that some of us are just hardwired to expect more of ourselves than there are hours in the day. Whether that's nature or nurture, or mostly likely a little of each, it's important to see it for what it is and learn to be okay with it. I'm sure that a good portion of my angst around time comes from always assuming I haven't done enough of *something.* If I've worked my ass off on one project (the past 10 days have been especially consumed by my vocational activities), I feel bad about neglecting others. Why are we so prone to passing judgement on ourselves when 24 hours is 24 hours, and we do what we can? Balance is important, for sure. But, if I look across the whole of my days, there's more harmony there than not, otherwise, I wouldn't have noticed the skinks at all. I guess what I'm trying to say is, "We're all right!" 🥰
Thank you for your post. There was something here that I needed, and it is hard today to put into words. But thank you. Thank you for this: “I decide. I make these choices because they satisfy a part of me that needs to be satisfied. The outcomes may not always have the feel of fulfillment, but if I weren’t benefitting somehow, I’d be more motivated to change.” Thank you for the Tao of Pooh section….which brought me to tears. I’ve checked that book out before and never made myself actually read it. I can’t do skinks though. I wish I knew a you in real life. I might actually be motivated to deal with the weeds. Partly, the fear of things running out of those weeds is the issue!
Amy, I'm so pleased to know that something here felt right for you when you read it. As you know, it's reassuring to be told that we're not the only one thinking or feeling a certain way. I've not revisited the Tao of Pooh (nor the House at Pooh Corner) in a long time. I think, for me, it is the richness of their simplicity. Coincidentally, I think the timing has to be right for the message to land as it is intended. Life isn't always ready to be simplified.
I'm not sure why I grew up feeling unafraid of things that jump and slither. Not that I want them to do that across my hands and feet, unless I've given them permission. The startle effect is real! For one thing, though, I don't have to contend with a lot of venomous critters here, so there's less to fret about in that regard. I sometimes think about the fact that they're equally or more afraid of me, and justifiably so! Imagine being their size and coming across...us?! 😅
Maybe, now that you've put the wish out there, the world will send you someone who could help you ease past the fears. I'll wish for that, too!
I figure I'll be working on that one for the rest of my days, Michael. But once in a while, when something magical like those two lizards calls me to a different kind of attention, I get closer to achieving it. Thank you for stopping by. Much appreciated. (Also, I love the name of your Stack!)
The skink photos are wonderful. Re your musings about how to spend your time, I recommend a book titled “4000 weeks”. The author has a point of view much like yours, and seems to give permission for us to spend our time as we please. Of course, understanding what it is that pleases us is often elusive.
Thanks for weighing in, Darrell, and for the book recommendation. I've placed a hold for the audio version from the library app. It's a 17 week wait, so clearly a popular title right now! Hope all is well in your world.
Marvelous magic in the garden! Nothing compares to the natural world and we're part of it with this amazing gift of deciding how to spend our time. Love your photos too! You take me right to Mary Oliver's "Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." And this from Annie Dillard in "The Writing Life." "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order- -willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living."
Thanks, Elizabeth. You enriched my morning immensely and I'll be looking for more of these gems. BTW, I am currently reading "Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin and the Dawn of Modern Science" by Renée Bergland.
"Natural Magic" sounds brilliant, I am going to seek it out! Thanks for that -
and such a thoughtful comment too.
Thank you so much, Gary. This is a rich comment. I so appreciate the kind words and the quotes, one of which lives in my head on repeat (Mary Oliver) and one which I'm glad to be reminded of. I will look for "Natural Magic." Sounds like the sort of book I'd really enjoy!
Mary Oliver's words are always so gently apt. I love her work.
Absolutely loved every bit of this post, Elizabeth! These tiny encounters with Nature are like bits of everyday mysticism provided for us and we catch them when we can. (Unlike those skinks! But what beauties - their skin is like vinyl, not like the usual dry, crispiness one associates with lizards). I relate to so much. I also "watch" myself squandering (in my case) time, promising myself that tomorrow will be different, oh, the exercising I will do. Tomorrow. Sharing hilarious Instagram morsels to my boys can also take time but seems important, in order to maintain my "cool Mummy" status which I sincerely hope has not expired ha! Anyway, super post. I shall think of those skinks many more times and I am pleased that someone else kind of thinks like I do.
Gosh, thank you. I'm heartened to know we are on similar wavelengths here! The skink skin is much more like that of snakes (which I hesitate to mention, people feeling as they do about snakes). I'll probably work on it for the rest of my days, but I am striving towards acceptance of all the qualities I've told myself are "less than suitable" about me. Not that I can't improve, but I like to think learning to be less critical of myself will be the right path in the long run. Appreciate you being here, Sue.
Another beautiful post, Elizabeth. Thank you for a delightful read - I've been thinking a good deal about time lately, and your words have resonated with me deeply.
I live close to the forest where A A Milne set his Winnie-the-Pooh books, and the Enchanted Place is magical. The view from there is stunning, and there's a plaque with an inscription to Milne and his illustrator, E H Shepard. We last found ourselves there on Shepard's birthday - the plaque was covered with flowers.
https://ashdownforest.org/explore/winnie-the-pooh/
Over 40 years since I first read 'The House at Pooh Corner' I still cannot read the last lines of it without crying. Kind of wish I hadn't sought out that web link above - because those words are right there! 🤣
Yay for lizards. I love them!
How wonderful to live close to such a special place! The Pooh books are works of pure genius, and speaking of...they are timeless!...and so very poignant. I might have to reread them all soon. Grateful for your presence here, Rebecca, and if you come up with any profound time management ideas, maybe something that gives us the option for 2x as many hours some days, do let me know. :)
I think if perfect time management could be bottled, Elizabeth, somebody would make a FORTUNE! 🤣
You “had” time to experience something wonderful! Now I “have” time to enjoy what you experienced. How can we own something that can’t be possessed, yet culturally, we seem to think we can!
Time is such a fraught notion. I’ve had some laugh out loud experiences with an old Uruguayan accountant who I finally decided never had a mother tongue and whose job was to process expense reports from my traveling staff after I approved the reports for payment.
He had habit of micro-reviewing dates on invoices and more than once, he stormed into my office and demanded to know why I approved a “600 year old” receipt (from a staff member who travelled to a country where the Islamic calendar was in use) or an “8 year old” receipt from someone who just returned from Ethiopia.
How we understand time culturally is every bit as baffling to me as were the dates on receipts for my old accountant. Although our digitalized, commoditized, globalized culture is turning the world into time hoarders like us Americans, it wasn’t always so and in many places, still isn’t so.
I am reading Alexandra Fuller’s book “Before the Rains Come” and she tells how disoriented she felt after growing up in Southern Africa and marrying an American who eventually took her home to Wyoming. She writes at length about trying to understand and adapt to the American cultural understanding of time, because even though her ethic background was European, her understanding of time was African.
In my backs and forths from country to country, I felt similar internal time-related friction and I’m not talking about jet lag. It’s easy to call it the pace of things, but that is a too simplistic explanation. I’ll just say it’s complex. Not everybody tries to “save” time or “make up for lost time.” Every culture seems to have a different understanding of whatever this thing we call time actually is.
The more I learn, the less it seems I know.
This is so true, Switter, and such an important consideration. I've had some professional opportunities to be involved in diversity trainings, and I remember that time and how it relates to work culture being a topic of discussion in several of those, with an emphasis on how very white and Western many of our time-specific conventions are. Your story of the Uruguayan accountant is a fabulous example!
My nature (no pun intended) is to appreciate long stretches of unscheduled time. I don't get them all that often, and as mentioned here, I'm apt to fill them up - but the freedom to choose when and with what is such a gift. I also tend to run late and have for as long as I can remember. Typically not more than 5-10 minutes, but I have a lot of shame and anxiety around that. I noticed, in not so distant past, that at least one brother is the same. The funny thing is, I don't remember it affecting how people responded to him. As a kid, I got saddled with being on "me time" or "having my head in the clouds." He was just "busy."
Thanks so much for the thoughtful comment, Switter!
“I’m the one in charge, and I am, apparently, disinclined to do things differently.” I can very much relate to this, Elizabeth and the sentiments you express around it. Thanks for sharing these thoughts that helped me to feel seen and not alone!
Thank YOU, Don. If you'd asked me to guess at your natural instincts around time, I would have supposed you were someone who fit necessary tasks in between the spaciousness (if that's the right word) of your hours. The stereotypical Buddhist, right?! Now you've got me wondering which part of my sentiments you're relating to. The busy-bother, or the Nothing? 😂
In order to respond properly I just read your essay again, only this time with the unpressured stillness of the early morning on my side. That alone has taught me something. Yesterday I was feeling like I'll never again have time to read with presence, to enjoy a mind empty of swirling Substack callings. Of course, that's just silly thinking; I had a Note go viral and I've been very busy responding to everyone, but tomorrow, maybe even today, all will be calm again.
I related to your comment that you carry with you a knowledge and maybe a desire to make some sort of change but you don't do it. That is something I do. And I can go for years with some thought like that in my mind without stopping and realizing; Oh! It's because I don't really want that! (alternatively, it could be because I don't really believe I can have it).
I really liked your essay and I'm so glad I read it again today. You are a peaceful and curious person!
Don, thanks ever so much for coming back in with this very thoughtful response. I've been caught in an especially busy patch at work, so I'm later than I would have liked getting back to you.
You are right on the mark with how you've summarized things here. We are slow to change because we don't really want it...or (importantly) don't really believe we can have it. The follow-on, for me, is thinking through whether I really *need* to change, or whether I'm reflecting a cultural expectation that doesn't really serve me well.
Congrats on the viral post (💯!!!) and applause for the thoughtfulness of responding to everyone. As you might have deduced, the Big Busy has kept me off Notes altogether, so I missed the fanfare. You'll have to link me to the post.
Cheers!
I've got The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet on my shelves and both books are so instructive and readable, with gentle humour that inevitably strengthens the messages even more.
Curiously, I was reading The Tao of Pooh the other day and remembered how in the past, I used to call myself and dearest others as the Uncarved Blocks.
We do need to give ourselves permission to 'make time', don't we? Ah, I feel a post coming on...
Prue, I love, love, love the Hoff's idea of the Uncarved block -- well, I guess it's more the Taoist idea, but as applied to Pooh it's just so delightful! I'll have to keep my eyes open for a used copy of the Te of Piglet, although interestingly the comments for this post have generated more book recommendations (not that you were necessarily recommending) than most, so now I'll have to figure out how to make time to read them. Ha!
Hope you're doing well, Prue. Thank you so much for chiming in.
She does without doing. Love this. "Oh bother," said Pooh.
Bother is such a great word, used as Pooh does. Thanks for reading, Courtney. :)
I loved this posting. I've long been identified a dreamer, A romantic,stopping to admire the "everyday sacred", much to the consternation of those I accompanied.
Currently, I watch a chipmunk, I call Gus, who sits with regularity on a small wood pile outside my kitchen window. Last summer I could sit in a deck chair a few feet from him and just observe him packing his cheeks, racing off to hide his bounty and return time and again. He appears like clockwork in early morning and late afternoon when his predators are less likely to appear. We are reestablishing comfort with proximity. These small moments bring me such pleasure.
Susan, thank you so much (and apologies for the delayed reply from me). Gus sounds delightful. Chipmunks are so cheerful. Though they live in the state, they are very uncommon where I am. I am much more likely to notice the everyday sacred, as you so elegantly put it. That may, in part, be because that is what's accessible to me. I don't travel all that much, so the Seven Wonders, and the sorts of elevated experiences some people experience in far flung places of the world, are not what comes to me. Then again, I think it's just my nature to see even small wonders as big. Appreciate you reading and commenting!
What a lovely post. Musing with a skink sounds like a remarkably relaxing way to spend an hour or two.
Thank you, June. Musing....yes. That's the word I need to focus on. Or, more to the point, that's the activity that reliably feeds my soul. Grateful to you for bringing it to this comment.
You’re welcome. I do a lot of musing these days.
"I am absolute crap at living in the moment," said my client yesterday. We were talking about time management, resilience and Transcendental Meditation. This reminded me of Alan Watt's 1951 essay "Become What You Are" in which he says we can not be out of accord with the Tao of life even if we try: "You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you can not be, for you are life and exist Now - otherwise you would not be here. Hence the infinite Tao is something which you can neither escape by flight nor catch by pursuit; there is no coming toward it or going away from it; it IS, and so are you."
For what other musings, besides yours, Elizabeth, do I read and, like Don, below, re-read, and find myself pausing all other things on my to do list to ponder, and find that quote, and bring it to this community and to you? Thanks for that.
Oh, Stewart. Such a rich comment that lands exactly right for me. I've expended a lot of navel-gazing energy across my years, trying to unlock the doors to self-improvement. While there's nothing wrong with that--I want to learn and grow indefinitely--it hasn't been from a place of acceptance. Instead, my inner critic has been in the lead, my efforts tinged with judgement, shame, and unacknowledged blame: "If only I could X, then Y would be better." So disempowering!
I am humbled by your last lines, Stewart, and also genuinely grateful to know that the story of my two visitors gave you permission to pause. Thank you for bringing your thoughts, and that quote, here!
So much of this post speaks to me, and I love the permission you're giving me to live a more lizardly life. This really struck me: "In the context of my working life, which I expect to maintain for as long as I can, I often wish for fewer commitments and more control over my schedule." I spent years wishing for the same thing, and then, finally, I was in a place to do something about it. And I did! I renegotiated agreements about labor and money with my husband, and I retired from being a public school educator. And guess what? I STILL don't have time to do all that I want. I still spend too much of mine thinking about time, lamenting time, wondering about time. Don't get me wrong: My life is transformed in wonderful ways and I am so grateful for the changes I've been able to make. Truly. But I still have to wrestle with questions about how to best live, and it's hard to change the habits of more than 40 years (having started working for a paycheck at 15). I appreciate the reminders in this piece of what I know, can so easily forget, and am slowly learning how to live accordingly: It's enough to be. Being is doing. There is enough time now for all that matters, and sometimes what matters is just being with others (humans and non-humans), resting, and paying attention. Loved this week's essay.
We do tend to align, don't we, Rita? Thank you, as always, for sharing your experiences with (I don't like this term, really, but...) time management, and for affirming that some of us are just hardwired to expect more of ourselves than there are hours in the day. Whether that's nature or nurture, or mostly likely a little of each, it's important to see it for what it is and learn to be okay with it. I'm sure that a good portion of my angst around time comes from always assuming I haven't done enough of *something.* If I've worked my ass off on one project (the past 10 days have been especially consumed by my vocational activities), I feel bad about neglecting others. Why are we so prone to passing judgement on ourselves when 24 hours is 24 hours, and we do what we can? Balance is important, for sure. But, if I look across the whole of my days, there's more harmony there than not, otherwise, I wouldn't have noticed the skinks at all. I guess what I'm trying to say is, "We're all right!" 🥰
Thank you for your post. There was something here that I needed, and it is hard today to put into words. But thank you. Thank you for this: “I decide. I make these choices because they satisfy a part of me that needs to be satisfied. The outcomes may not always have the feel of fulfillment, but if I weren’t benefitting somehow, I’d be more motivated to change.” Thank you for the Tao of Pooh section….which brought me to tears. I’ve checked that book out before and never made myself actually read it. I can’t do skinks though. I wish I knew a you in real life. I might actually be motivated to deal with the weeds. Partly, the fear of things running out of those weeds is the issue!
Amy, I'm so pleased to know that something here felt right for you when you read it. As you know, it's reassuring to be told that we're not the only one thinking or feeling a certain way. I've not revisited the Tao of Pooh (nor the House at Pooh Corner) in a long time. I think, for me, it is the richness of their simplicity. Coincidentally, I think the timing has to be right for the message to land as it is intended. Life isn't always ready to be simplified.
I'm not sure why I grew up feeling unafraid of things that jump and slither. Not that I want them to do that across my hands and feet, unless I've given them permission. The startle effect is real! For one thing, though, I don't have to contend with a lot of venomous critters here, so there's less to fret about in that regard. I sometimes think about the fact that they're equally or more afraid of me, and justifiably so! Imagine being their size and coming across...us?! 😅
Maybe, now that you've put the wish out there, the world will send you someone who could help you ease past the fears. I'll wish for that, too!
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, Amy.
I really enjoyed this reflection. It resonated with me in a deep way.
This line especially got me:
“ I wonder: If mine were the only life I had to examine, would I long for anything at all?”
I figure I'll be working on that one for the rest of my days, Michael. But once in a while, when something magical like those two lizards calls me to a different kind of attention, I get closer to achieving it. Thank you for stopping by. Much appreciated. (Also, I love the name of your Stack!)
Yes, I feel the same way, it does feel like a life long lesson that one. Worth the effort though.
And thank you! I like the name of your substack as well :)
🤗