Making time

[chelidon]

The big news on my end was that I took a day off on Sunday. I mean a whole day, off, entire, complete. A real day of rest. No for-pay work, no work on the land, no work at all. I didn't get (much) done around the house -- no major projects, at least. Barely any time spent online, for any reason. It was glorious. I don't even remember much of what I did during the morning, other than sipping strong coffee, and spending some time with my housemates, then in the afternoon some dear friends/clan came over and we hung out, had a pizza suck, drank home-made sangria and sweet well water, and mead and cider, mint julips and local beer, and talked about everything under the sun as the lazy day drifted by and the sun slowly sank over the horizon of tree-covered hills. We reminisced about the past, visioned for the future, planned some mayhem, played with a scary nailgun one friend had brought over for me so I can repair the paddock fence, shared some tunes, told some appalling jokes (two rather frightening topics of note were "extreme baptism" and "sticky clown love"), sweated a bit (while complaining about the *stifling* heat -- low 90s and 35% humidity, those of you in more southerly climes might have just the tiniest bit of sympathy knowing we, like most folks up nawth, have no air conditioning whatsoever ;>) Later that night, some of my housemates and I threw a few games of darts, then one of my beloved housemates and I worked out some sticky issues of contention between us to a sweetly blissful conclusion. And I still got to sleep by somewhere around 11, and slept until 8 this morning, waking after a night of vivid dreams rested, sated, and relaxed.

This Monday morning, instead of being hectic and stressed, I had a slow, moderately paced day, took some time and charged my housemate's dead car battery so they could get to work, and while waiting for the charge to complete, hung out with them and with my son, played some silly games, sipped my coffee, got the work done that absolutely needed to be done, and still had time to play games with my son and sit and eat lunch together, and play some more games afterwards. Somehow, even given unexpected events, there was plenty of time, oodles of time, enough to work, and play, and relax, and be with family and loved ones without being stressed about all the things that weren't getting done.

Now one of the things I sometimes teach is time magick. And one of the things I teach as a core principle is that if you want to have more time, you have to make more time. Treat time with respect, instead of as a commodity, or as a scarce resource or an enemy, and time can be your ally, instead of seeming to be your bitter nemesis. And still, and still, I can easily fall thrashing into the dominant paradigm, waking up suddenly, realizing I've been imagining, fearing, believing another one of those Big Lies, the lie that there just Is Not Enough Time. There is in fact plenty of time, but to have it, you have to make it, or rather, desire it and choose it -- caress instead of bludgeon and compress, honor and respect instead of merely using up, hoarding, chopping up into ever-smaller bits like some mere thing. Time is perhaps the most valuable gift we are given in this life. Doing more and more work in less and less time is not, as classic capitalism would have us believe, the route to increased efficiency and utopia. Many things -- for example sex, eating, spending time with your family...cannot be quantified in a way where faster is necessarily better, in fact, quite the opposite.

And I know this, and I still fall into the old patterns, so easily. Make time, take time, let time be the ally it could and would be, if only we let it.

Comments

[lylythe-strega.livejournal.com]

By George, I think he's got it! (*dodge*)

Love you. Yes. And here's to those times, and may there be many more of them.