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Making
Time
The
trick in writing a column that is occasionally and purportedly
personal is to make sure that it isn’t.
The trick about self-revelation is that you don’t have to.
And no one, except people who really do know you, will know
the difference.
But then sometimes you’re in a rush, the deadline is looming
and there isn’t time for anything else except the unvarnished
truth.
The other night I went out to buy a rug for my living room
in my never-ending attempt to make it seem like a large, light
and spacious room when it is, in fact, tiny, dark and cramped.
Or so it seems to me. I was in a hurry to get in and out of
the mall and I wasn’t feeling optimistic about what kind of
rugs I might find. Plus, I had a lot of work I still wanted
to do that night. If this trip didn’t turn out to be a success
I would have wasted the time it took to drive to Rotterdam
Square Mall, not a favorite place of mine anyway, which is
putting it lightly.
I gave myself 10 minutes. I speedwalked among the noisy fountains
and the trans-fat-saturated smells from the foodstalls and
the packs of roaming teenagers and the angry-looking young
couples ringed-round by their scruffy children. Humanity was
in my way.
I bought a rug, drove home, put it on the floor, then went
into another room to sit at my computer and write something
against a looming deadline. Not for the column. Another deadline.
Writer Joan Chittister, in her book Illuminated Life: Monastic
Wisdom for Seekers of Light, poses the question: “How
shall we ever get the most out of life if life itself is our
greatest obstacle to it?”
Everybody knows everybody is busy. Everybody is always complaining
about multi-tasking and double-booking. People sleep with
their cell phones on, check their e-mail on weekends and arrive
wherever they are going—even yoga class—out of breath.
Like everybody else who kvetches about their busyness and
then does nothing to change it, I know I am predisposed to
over-function. I’ve always been that way, trying to pack two
lives’ worth of experience into my one: two marriages, two
kids, two graduate degrees, two—or more—careers. I could really
use a second Social Security card.
But ironically, a large part of my job requires me to be available,
interruptible, unflappable and unrushed. It is my job to create
a climate of spaciousness in which people who need to can
talk freely, without any apparent time constraints. I try
to do this; I want to be effective at what I do.
However, more often than I would like to admit, I am thinking
about the next throng of things I have to do, thinking about
the time I am losing spending my time listening to someone
who is not talking fast enough.
After all, I always do whatever I am doing as fast as I can.
I write as fast as I can. I shower as fast as I can. I shop,
read and drive as fast as I can. I choose magazines over books—I
can read them faster. I watch the last half of football games—saves
time. I used to write a journal but it took too long. So I
walk around out of touch with my feelings most of the time.
You can’t miss what you don’t feel.
But what will my gravestone say?
She
finished her to-do list?
She emptied her inbox?
I
don’t know if other people share the same bifurcated sense
of reality that I do: trying to convey to those I work with
that time is not of the essence, while meanwhile living constantly
on the fly.
Of course, at root there is an unacceptable hubris in living
like this—it is as if I think my presence in others’ lives
justifies absenting my own. But the fact is, I am replaceable
in other peoples’ lives. I am not replaceable in my life.
If I am not there, at home in body and soul, then the house
really is shuttered and dark. A shell.
“How
shall we ever get the most out of life if life itself is our
greatest obstacle to it?”
The only answer I have come up with so far is dinner. A friend
of mine complained about the fact that I never want to do
anything other than just go out for dinner. I resist movies,
plays, sporting events and concerts. They are such a time
commitment. And while it’s true you can leave, if you are
with someone the odds are they won’t want to.
But dinner is different. It’s a pleasant captivity to sit
with people you love at a table in a quiet restaurant. You
don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to go any place
other than maybe to the restroom. You don’t have to rush.
Dinners with people I care about, dinners for which I am not
responsible, are among the most sacramental moments in my
life. They accomplish nothing—the best kind of nourishment
for the soul.
I know I move too fast. And restaurant dinners aren’t any
kind of longterm answer, though they are palliative. And they
will have to do until I find a way to feel the cramped walls
of my living room expand around me and in that light and spacious
stillness, discover my home.
—Jo
Page
jopage@graceniska.org
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