At the Car Dealership, Thinking about Time

My relationship with time continues to evolve. On the one hand, I recognize at age 72 that even under the best of circumstances, I don’t have all that much left. I read somewhere that people like me are in the fourth quarter. We just don’t know how far into it we are.  So just in case that airhorn sounds soon, I don’t want to be caught off guard with important dreams and wishes unfulfilled. 

On the other hand, I am amazed at how relaxed about time I am. I think I am more aware of that now that I am working on another book, because there is always the temptation to pack a maximum amount of writing into a day.  But I haven’t been doing that at all. Sunday I took the whole day off to drive up Vancouver Island for the day. Monday, I spent a half a day combining a two-hour walk around a local lake, with lunch, and dropping a friend at the airport. She kept mentioning how aware she was of how much time this was taking away from my writing, and I guess it boils down to needing a much wider sense of productivity in my life. I want to produce happiness, vitality, pleasure, companionship, health, not just words. It was time far better spent than writing all day. Tomorrow my son comes to visit me in Victoria for a week, and much as I love finding out what’s going to happen next in my new book, I don’t care if Iwrite a word while he’s here.

Right now, I am sitting at the Toyota dealership getting my Prius serviced. They asked if I wanted a taxi or bus voucher so I could go home and back, and for a hot moment I considered it. Then I realized I don’t mind waiting for my car. I don’t really want to go home for an hour or two. Just sitting for a while and walking over to the mall across the street to pick up a few things I’d need to stop for in the next day or two anyway both seem like a pretty good use of my morning. I’m listening to some oldies on the sound system in the lounge, singing along (only in my head out of mercy for others) and having fun remembering back when. And of course drafting a blog post. It probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to do that today, and writing these posts is one of the most reliable ways I have to get in touch with myself.

I think about expressions like ”taking time,” and ’making time,” and i want to laugh at how much we cannot do either. We don’t really even ”have time” or to “not have time” to do things. We don’t own it that way. Time moves along and we move with it doing our best, or not, to bless this gift of life by using it in ways we value.

It’s not just waking hours that count.  It’s feeling at home in one’s day, whatever that means at the moment. I don’t think I have ever been in partnership with time in quite the same way I am now. I want a full life but I see no need to fill up my days. When I manage simply to be here now, I notice how full they simply are.