Living life like a perishable item.
Seems straightforward. It’s a fact we will all die. And this fact feels like it should be urgent, or somewhat in the foreground.
But I’m still blown away at all the time I just completely piss away like I’m going to be here forever, and you’re going to be here forever.
In one way, I’m glad that I’m not constantly in fight/flight mode, always worried when my time will come.
But on the other hand, this complete lack of awareness that is actually going to happen is a bit concerning .
So lately, I’ve really been digging into the idea of time, and my time, and your time, and our time together.
The buckets of time I spend on certain activities: I have always been hyper-fixated on productivity. Even if it’s a leisure activity, I almost want to squeeze every ounce of leisure out of it. I am always trying to optimize, to a point where maybe I am never not working.
And although I have managed thus far, I’m starting to feel a shift, a very soft, polite but urgent need to slow it all down, choose wiser, but not in a way that yields anything but complete rest.
I decided to spend a lot of time considering what’s important to me. We were driving back from an extremely restful weekend, Penn was napping, Paul was driving, and I had hours to think. A luxury. But something that shouldn’t feel like a luxury anymore.
Time was a theme that hasn’t left me since that drive. The consistency of it, relentlessly drumming on, the impatience. There is nothing we can do about time. There are so many think pieces on how to optimize, but it feels more like how to squeeze out more productivity than it is to really get to the marrow of time well spent, to live a fulfilled life.
I want to focus on the quality of time with myself, my community, and my home. I want to balance this time as much as possible. Other things require my attention and time, but they only exist to propel/support the most important three. A necessary part, but not something I feel the need to give my attention to. The older I get, the less time feels abundant, the more sensitive I am to what I invest my time in.
Myself: There are always these sanctimonious parents that remind you that these days won’t always last, and that’s true. But this feels like also a cry for yourself as much as it is to cherish presence with a toddler. This is a reminder that time for myself, to myself, to take care of myself, is just as important as my community and my home. What will I do with the time I get after Penn goes to sleep? What time will I carve out for myself regardless of when he’s sleeping? How will I take care of my body in a way that serves my current and future health instead of what I think I should look like? What if I just laid down on the floor and stared at the ceiling and decided to be radically unproductive once a week? What would the world do? What would this do for my brain?
Giving myself permission to do nothing is something I need desperately. Not to recharge to go back and overproduce, but to just radically rest because I am a human, because it feels good, because pleasure doesn’t have to be earned or justified. Lesson learning.
My Community: my family, my friends, and the people I have yet to meet.
The PYs come home exactly at 5pm Monday-Thursday in a hurried breathless exciting heap. I ask Penn how his day was as I help him get his shoes and hat and coat off before he speeds off to his beloved dinosaurs. I ask Paul the same thing and we all collapse on the couch before dinner. These moments make me feel alive and restored and energized and incredibly grateful. I want more of them, but sometimes I miss them when I’m talking to someone else, when I’m at yoga, if I’m writing. The point of being a present parent isn’t always being on: it’s being present when you’re ready to be present and not available when you are not available. This has been one of my hardest lessons since becoming a mom but holding those boundaries benefits everyone.
Extrapolate that lesson to my outside circle: I have to cancel a friend hang if I need more sleep or if I feel like I need time to myself. I also have to actively push my introverted self to meet people outside of my bubble. I’m out of practice at this, but building community is part of what challenges me and helps me grow. The people I have yet to meet will help me in my next chapter, and I can’t wait to meet them, except I can because I have massive social anxiety (which is a door, but that’s for another time).
My home: my physical address, nature, the environment
I used to spend a lot of time worrying about buying a home to finally stay in one place, but now I’m more focused on feeling like I am home.
Home can mean so many things. My house feels like home because of the people in it and the work we have done to make it feel like ours, but maybe it will never be on paper and that’s fine. Home can be a familiar hiking trail that you know so well, you can hike it in the dark. Home can make you feel like you belong in a way you may not be able to describe. Home can be somewhere you haven’t been yet. And instead of spending so much time finding “the” home I will die in, I’ve realized that I just want to find more places that I can feel like I am heard and loved and cared for. For me, home isn’t ownership: it’s belonging. And I long to belong in more spaces than I currently have access to.
When I put all of these things together, it’s the ultimate feeling of a fulfilled life: feeling rested and energized around my community in my home, without an agenda or a plan or a carefully curated menu. Warsan Shire says “Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself - what you're wearing, who you're around, what you're doing. Recreate and repeat.”
I want radical rest for all of us. I want us all to wake up and feel so incredibly rested and restored. I want our brains to be free to dream the craziest things for ourselves and our families. I want us all to create, but also to find value in sustaining our creations.
This isn’t another life hack: this isn’t a way to squeeze out the most happiness and never feel pain. This isn’t about how to hyper organize your house so you feel successful or how to fit 3 more workouts into your week. This is about being intentional about how we spent our hours on earth. Not once did I mention work, social media, or my personal brand. All of that is a distraction. Because if we really figured out fulfillment without commodification, capitalism would die.
And the astronaut trillionaires don’t want that for you, but I do.