Life After Fear

If you would have asked me, I would have insisted I was goal-oriented. No bar was too high. No task couldn't be 'multi-ed". There wasn't any ideal I thought I could not reach with just a little more effort, better time management and sheer will power. I remember when I first read that humans are believed to have an obtainable lifespan of 120 years. That immediately became my goal.

And it was going to take at least that long for me to accomplish everything I wanted to do with this life. I wanted to learn so many things, and by "learning" I really think I expected mastery. I took classes continually...Latin ballroom dance, American Sign Language, massage, martial arts, cooking, wine tasting...I planted 28 separate garden plots in a condo we were renting. Most of those plants I started from seed. I wanted to grow every kind of basil I could find and when I went into the woods and picked wild berries I learned to make jelly, and that led to canning tomatoes, and that brought me back to my basil. And then basil and wild black raspberries brought me to infused balsamic vinegar. And that brought me to making my own hand stamped labels. 

Pick any path I ventured on and the same thing happened. My husband once said that living with me was like living with a monkey with a gun.

And while I often enjoyed what I was doing, I usually felt guilty that I wasn't giving my newfound skills, talents and knowledge enough attention. I was so busy canning tomatoes that I wasn't taking out my camera. While I was biking I wasn't giving massages or dancing the tango. I hated being " one of those" martial artists who got her black belt (or two) and then quit. And when to fit in reading all those books when I was busy training to be a yoga instructor?  And, of course, there were the blue bird boxes I was monitoring for the Audubon Society and the monthly parties at our house.

Those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head. Monkey with a machine gun.

I was so intent on living life to it's fullest. I thought it was passion that drove me.

I'm thinking now that it might have been fear.

I just didn't want to fail at this life. I didn't want to be less than I could have been. Didn't want to do less than I could have done. Didn't want to fail in my appreciation of every day and all the myriad ways one could spend it.

I'm not afraid any more.

If I never grow another basil plant from seed, it's okay with me. I can't remember the tango steps and I've given away boxes of books I never did open up. Seasons of wild berries have ripened and fallen to the ground without me to catch them. Living to 120 isn't even relevant to me any more. However long I have left, its going to go fast. That's all I need to know.

I used to respond to my sense of time speeding up by trying to outrace it. Multitasking, shaving a couple hours off of my night's sleep so I could fit in meditation and predawn walks in the woods or journalling or reading...I responded to feeling like I had less time with more activity, more attempts to manage my time, more ways to trick it into expanding for me.

It didn't work.

Time has only sped up.

I had a professor once say that he thought the sense of time speeding up as we age was a phenomenon due to the decreasing percent of our lives that each day represents.  For a one day old baby, the second day is a full half of her life. That's a big chunk. Half a life time can feel like forever.  A day to a one year old is 1/365th of his life.  I just turned 49. A day for me is getting close to being an impossibly tiny fraction at 1/17,885 (I didn't count leap years). That's a blink of an eye and it feels like it, especially in the winter when the days are shorter anyway.

I used to wonder how I could fit in 25 things in a 24 hour day (26 if I decided to count sleep). Now I'm more interested in how I can limit what I do to maybe 3 things because even as I type this there is a squirrel who is defying several laws of physics and common sense in its attempt to break into yet another bird feeder and it's too good a show to miss. I need space for those moments without feeling like that squirrel is coming between me and my goals for the day.  

I have to laugh as I type this, and Erin can attest to this...my animals have always been slow, very deliberate. I have no idea why.  My cat, Luigi, could take a good ten minutes to decide just where to put his paw to begin the process of laying down in just the right spot. The actual laying down process was drawn out from there in such a way as to almost require time lapse photography to discern it. Penny can turn herself 17 times in one direction before deciding she really needs to spin 12 times in the other direction to make her nest just right. Sometimes by turn 11 she abandons the notion all together and starts over in a new spot. Laying down properly has always been a task of some significance to my animal friends. Eating is approached in much the same fashion.

So, it is "Quad Time" or Dad Time, Luigi Time, or Penny Time I have been learning to live in? Maybe I've actually had an entire team of teachers sent to get me to realize that the way to make time slow down is to make each moment count, not in the way it is crammed full, but in the way it is savored.

With each pet, I have become more patient. I can stand with Penny for as long as her twitching nose wants us to stand, staring into the dark woods at night. I can tell by her stance that she is reading novels in the dark. I can't see a thing but the Moon. The only sound I can hear is the owl in the distance.

Where else on earth would I need to be?

Comments

[Kate]

thanks,
...again. :)

[Peter]

There's nothing like a canine friend to teach you about being "in the moment."

[Laura]

You are welcome and Amen to that...

[Nick Winter]

I just love this post. And I love it even more reading it the second time around. I love the monkey comment by your husband. Made me laugh out loud. Along those lines of doing more with less time, during my first semester at DU I kept thinking about how Lao Tzu said the Tao does nothing yet leaves nothing undone. I'm still trying to figure out how I can actually apply that one in "real life". I mean I know it's absurd to think I can just sit still and expect my lectures to write and deliver themselves, but still I think there's some wisdom in what he said. If I figure it out I'll let you know... :)