“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such
times. But that is not for them
to decide. All we have to decide
is what to do with the time that’s given us.”
The Fellowship of the Ring –
novel by J.R.R. Tolkein, 1954
“We make our own lives wherever we are, after all…They are broad or
narrow according
to what we put into them, not what we get out. Life is rich and full here…everywhere…if we
can only learn how to open our whole hearts to its richness and fullness.”
Anne of Avonlea – novel by L.M.
Montgomery, 1909
When was the last time you said, “I’d love to [fill in the
blank], but I just don’t have enough time!”
My guess is you’ve said it sometime in the last week or two. It’s a fairly common statement, one that we
all fall back on when we have to give our excuse for why we can’t show up
somewhere, why we can’t meet with someone, or why we can’t commit to
something. Sadly, we also use it to
explain away why we can’t start a healthy habit or work toward something we’ve
always dreamed of achieving. When we say
things like, “The day just got away from me!” we are trying to find a way to explain
why we didn’t do something we feel we should have. It’s an excuse. Time tends to get the blame for why we feel
we can’t make a particular choice. In
these cases, we speak in a way that suggests we believe that time is something
out of our control; as though, somehow, we’ve just not been given a large
enough allotment of time to accomplish what we need to accomplish. Based on this statement, it would seem that we
get the time we get – with no personal input – and hopefully we have enough
time to live the life we want to live.
Simple as that.
On the flip side, how many times have you heard someone get
upset about things in their lives that happen when they weren’t expecting
it? So often, the uttered phrases are
things like, “This was just the wrong time for that to happen” or “The timing
wasn’t right”. In the best situations,
we say things like, “This couldn’t have come at a more perfect time!” Here, we seem to suggest that time is or isn’t
cooperating in a way that it should.
There is a right and a wrong when it comes to time and we obviously have
the ability to identify that wrong and right.
The timing is off (or on) because we deem it so. We have control over whether it’s the right
or wrong time. It is possible that when
people say these phrases, it’s just their attempt at finding some perspective
on what’s going on in their lives.
Labeling something as good or bad timing creates some meaning in
whatever’s going on, and more than just about any other need, I believe human
beings crave meaning in their lives.
(That’s a blog post for another day. J) However, I think it’s important to note that
people find perspective by attempting to gain control. Those big problems (or big rewards) fit into
the picture we have of our time or they don’t.
So, clearly, we must be able to exercise some level of control over how
we spend our time. Otherwise, we wouldn’t
know if something was or wasn’t interfering.
So here’s the dichotomy: on a micro level, we seem to
believe we exercise little control over our time; on a macro level, we seem to believe
we have much. I realize I’m being a
little broad, but I think you get what I’m driving at. Apparently we can’t control time until we
should be able to. It’s like time can’t
win: either it’s getting the blame for our inability to use it wisely or it’s
acting like a petulant child, taking what it wants when it’s convenient rather
than kowtowing to our specific orders.
Or if time is behaving properly, it is doing so because we tell it to.
In mythology, the Fates were three sisters who had control
over the amount of time a person walked on the earth. Using a spinning wheel, Clotho spun each
person’s life thread. Lachesis gave each
person his or her destiny. Finally,
Atropos was in charge of when each person’s life ended: she cut the thread when
it was time for that person to go to the Elysian Fields (hopefully). The Greeks and Romans created this story for
the same reason any group of people creates mythology – to explain that which
they cannot explain (often using an even more fantastical explanation than the
idea they cannot explain). Since these ancient
peoples felt they couldn’t explain why some people died and others lived, particularly
those who went through similar circumstances (war, childbirth, disease, etc.),
they found an explanation that fit what they perceived as an arbitrary thing.
Today, we don’t have anything like the Fates. At least not in the form of three women
sitting around a spinning wheel.
However, I do believe that we struggle just as much today with the
feeling that life (and what fills it) is a little arbitrary. As I’ve researched about the calendar, I’ll
be honest…at first I thought it was kind of lame. I had done the reading/research, so I kept up
with it, but I didn’t find it terribly life-changing. Some of the other topics I’ve read about,
I’ve immediately seen a deeper connection between the topic and what it means
to be human, especially an American human. The calendar? Not so much.
But as the weeks have gone on and I’ve thought more and more about time
and how we manage it, I’ve been struck at how long it’s taken me to admit something. Something that I would guess most people
would be wary to admit. Something that
is so deeply seated in who we are as human beings (particularly Americans) that
it has taken its sweet time hitting the surface. Here it is:
I don’t have complete control over my life.
Now, if any of my former students are reading this, they are
gasping for breath going, “MISS CARSON!
You always talked about choices and about how everyone can always make
choices, especially with how they spend their time!” I don’t deny that fact. I believe choices are an important puzzle
piece to this facet of life with which I’m currently wrestling. We do have the ability to make choices. But I would argue that most people have the
dichotomy a little mixed up. I believe
that on time’s macro level, we often have much less control than we assume we
do and on a micro level we have much more.
Here’s what I mean.
When I think about my twenties, I see major life decisions
that I’ve made – moving to California, starting my own business, applying to
grad school, giving high school teaching multiple chances to make me a happy
worker, and taking a job at a law firm when I had no experience. I actively chose to do those things and I
made those choices realizing that I would have to accept the results. But I didn’t necessarily have control over
the results. I had no idea that I would
hate living in California. I couldn’t write
myself an acceptance or rejection letter to graduate school. I was not aware that the law firm would close
after eight months. Without my input and
without my permission, many of my life choices have led to dead ends, heartache,
and “Well…what now?” conversations. I
can start the ball rolling down the hill, but I cannot always steer it down the
path that I think is best. And, let’s be
real, sometimes the path I think is best is really fraught with roadblocks and
hardship. But I have no idea if that’s
true unless I begin the trip down the hill.
When I look at my day-to-day life, I can also see decisions
that I make. However, I believe that I have
much more control over how I spend my time on a daily basis than in how my
major life decisions turn out. I think
everyone has that ideal person that they want to be in their heads and they are
either filling their time with being that person or filling their time with not
being that person. Let me provide some
personal examples. In the last year, I’ve
worked really hard at making the choice to read a book when I have free time
rather than jump online or turn on the TV.
Sometimes I’ve been a reading champ…other times, not so much. I truly enjoy working out and staying
healthy, but I still have to decide every day to do something active. My inclination is to sit around and read a book or take a
nap. When I started my business and knew
that I wouldn’t be working until the afternoons, I made the decision that I
would still be up at 7am every day, getting going with the day’s tasks. Some days this is easier than others. Now, I don’t bring these up to be like, “Look
at me! I’m perfect!” I bring it up to say that I’ve poignantly
realized in the last two years that I have a choice over how my time is spent
each day. Even choosing to write more
often has been something I’ve had to actively work on. I started this blog last January with every
intention of writing every week. Last
summer, I fell off the bandwagon and I didn’t write anything between July and
December. But I’m back at it now,
re-starting that writing schedule and trying my best to be the person I want to
be. Ultimately, I have a choice about
how I spend the majority of my day and any time I say, “I wish I had the time!”
I’m just creating an excuse for why I didn’t make a better choice. Good uses of time don’t populate my day
naturally. I have to actively choose to
be a good time-user.
I’ve thought a lot in the last decade about what it means to
craft a life. What is the definition of
a life well-lived? How do I know if I’m
living my best life? What are the pieces
that make up a worthwhile existence? I
believe that humans, since we are largely creatures of habit, tend to create a
pattern or blueprint for what we see as a fulfilling life. Sort of an “Oh, I recognize that, so it must
be okay and safe” kind of idea. When people
we meet don’t fit that pattern, it’s hard for us to know how to place them in
the world. I’ve struggled with the fact
that American society seems to place so high of a premium on the “normal” adult
life – find a job you love, find a person you love, find a piece of property
you love, have some kids you love, and just love your life. I can honestly say that I’ve found none of
those loves. So what does that
mean? Is my life not fulfilling? When I get together with married friends of
mine, I often feel like they aren’t sure how to talk to me because I don’t have
any of those “normal” talking points on which to build a conversation. It’s like they can’t level with me because we don’t have similar lives.
But what I’ve come to realize (in the last year in
particular) is that it isn’t the macro time decisions that make up a life. Oh, they help. They create a framework or a foundation, a skeleton
of a life. But all that stuff that makes
a body a body – the muscles, the organs, the skin, the blood vessels – are the
parts of life that happen after a watershed moment. It’s the micro time decisions. There is more life to be found in how I respond
to the results of a huge life-changing decision or occurrence than there is in
the actual making of the decision. If I
choose a new path, it’s not the actual path that makes up my life, it’s the daily
process of walking on the path that is my life.
When adult life doesn’t meet my – or anyone else’s – expectations, I can
be angry that it doesn’t look “right” or I can start the process of acclimating
myself to my new surroundings and finding ways to live my best life in those
surroundings. I can sit around waiting
to fill the roles that society tells me I must fill in order to be an adult, or
I can create an adult life for myself that I’m proud of. But each of these ideas is a daily
choice. Living a full life happens every
day…not just when a baby is born or when vows are spoken or when a mortgage is
signed or when the time clock is punched.
I would never say those things aren’t important, but I will say this:
people who look to just those big-life events to create a life for themselves
may look back on their lives and see empty boxes on a calendar.
I hope one day that I do find a job I love, a person I love,
a piece of property I love, and have some kids I love. But whether my life is filled with those
things or not,
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I would like to thank the following books for their very
informative pages regarding the calendar:
Barbara A. Somervill, The History of the Calendar
Patricia K. Kummer, The Calendar
Peter Patilla, Time
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