four thousand weeks, and 365 seconds

Standing there in the wind and the sound of the trees, remembering she is here with all of it for only a short while. ~ kai skye

As I begin to write here for the first time in many months, I’m a little uncertain about how to break such a long silence, a silence that’s been full of days lived and feelings felt, if not of words written and thoughts shared.

And then I remember that most of us are in the same boat, having crossed the threshold into yet another year of pandemic anxiety, political turmoil, and private stress, grief, and frustration.  If ever there was a moment to reach out a hand and say, “I’m still here, I hope you, are, too,” this is it.

And so, hello there.  I’ve missed you.  It’s lovely to think about this short note flying out into the world and landing in your email box.

We’re halfway through January and in the midst of our first really cold spell of winter in New England. There are a few more minutes of light each day, but it was 5 below zero as the sun came up this morning and it was minus 2 just now when I dashed out to fill the birdfeeders.  When my husband asked at breakfast what I’m looking forward to, I paused on my fourth Wordle guess and struggled to come up with an answer. Lunch?

Perhaps you, too, are hitting an invisible wall this month.  We’ve been here before, masked up and keeping our distance.  But there’s a kind of resignation and weariness creeping in this winter that feels new. Even a little news feels like too much craziness and chaos to process. There are so many reasons to despair and so few glimmers of hope. Meanwhile, hunkered down at home with one bitterly cold day sliding into the next, it seems almost pointless to make future plans. Why get attached to anything? Just figuring out what to do with the day at hand can feel like a cruel reminder of all that was possible once but is no longer.

For many of us there seems to be an unsettling disconnect between the surging virus cases and the number of people who continue to shop and dine and socialize as if Covid is history.  And yet, with two parents in their mid-eighties who most definitely must not get sick, I’m being more careful now than ever. Seeing them, and ensuring that we all feel safe being together, means not seeing anyone else. To my husband and me this extra bit of caution feels like an obvious choice, not only for my parents’ sake but for the common good. Our tiny local hospital is currently overwhelmed with Covid patients. Meanwhile, even here in our small town there’s a sense that people’s beliefs, habits, and priorities are becoming more polarized. It’s going to be a long winter.

As I ordered two packages of N95 masks this morning, I was relieved they’re finally easy to find, and also a little sad to realize how accustomed we’ve become to this crazy quilt of unease and loss that defines life in 2022 – a state of affairs we couldn’t have begun to imagine two years ago. So much of our social fabric is unraveling at once – our embattled democracy, voting rights, the integrity of the Supreme Court, our healthcare system, our schools, the supply chain, the climate, even the most basic agreements about what’s true, what matters, and how we human beings should behave toward one another at the grocery store.  No wonder everything at this moment feels particularly fraught.

And yet, it is perhaps because of this recognition of just how precarious things are, that I also find myself with a heightened sense of how precious life is.  As author Oliver Burkeman observes, “The more that you remain aware of life’s finitude, the more you will cherish it, and the less likely you will be to fritter it away on distractions.”

I’ve been thinking about the truth of these words a lot this month.

If, as it is said, grief and gratitude go hand in hand, then surely these pandemic years have given us all a starker, deeper appreciation for life’s finitude.  How could it be otherwise, when over 62 million Americans have been ill with Covid and over 800,000 of us have died?  To absorb this reality is to recognize another one: we’re all vulnerable.  Tomorrow is not a given, no one’s future is guaranteed, and all our dreams are provisional.  Anything could happen.

Knowing this, in a way we couldn’t possibly have known it before, isn’t exactly comforting. (Taking an informal poll among my family and friends confirms this: no one’s sleeping well these days.)  But confronting the truth of my own mortality also feels like a wake-up call, an incentive to examine my relationships, my activities, and especially my attitudes, in a new light.  How do I really want to spend my days?  How can I create a life that’s more joyful, more connected, and more meaningful in whatever time I do have?

Perhaps there’s a way to see in our collective pandemic trauma not only the darkness, which is all too real, but also a message that I, for one, have very much needed to hear: I can’t change the big picture, but I can choose where to put my attention, my energy, my creativity, my love.  I can lose another night’s sleep over all that’s wrong in the world, or I can honor all that’s been lost by making a commitment to live more compassionately, more playfully, and more gratefully right now.

Before, I took so much for granted, especially time. How easy it was to fool myself into thinking life would continue as it always had, spooling out endlessly through the decades, twisting and turning, but ongoing. Now, at 63, I’m older than some of my dearest friends ever got to be. Watching my parents gamely navigate an array of health challenges, I also see how grateful they are for every uneventful day. (They never complain about the hard ones, either.) And finally, I do get it: even if we’re one of the lucky ones, life is still too short.

In fact, as Burkeman reminds us, “The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief.  Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.”  The number certainly gives me pause.  And Burkeman’s profound, beautifully written and reasoned book, aptly called Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, feels like a light on the path, showing us a thoughtful way forward. Suddenly the question I’m asking isn’t, “When will this all end?” but rather, “How can I make this day a good one?”

If I’ve learned anything from these last two years — so full of sadness and fear, yet memorable as well for all their moments of unexpected beauty and of grace — it’s this:  I won’t ever get a single one of my own weeks back. They’ve flown. If I live another twenty years, I have just over a thousand weeks to go, a thousand weeks to treasure or squander.  The take-away is so painfully obvious I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to see it: Any time I spend wishing for things (or people!) to be other than they are is time wasted.

So why not figure out for myself, moment to moment, what matters now?  Why not devote more time to the things that feel meaningful or that bring me joy, and less to worrying about all that’s out of my control?  I may not be able to solve big problems, but I can solve little ones. I can care for my own small corner of the world, and for all the people and creatures with whom I share this place, this home, this unprecedented time. In the face of all the things I can’t change, I can emphatically choose, moment by moment, to embrace my life and my loved ones as they actually are – imperfect, mysterious, lovely, heartbreakingly mortal.

Easier said than done, yes. And of course I’m talking to myself here.  But as soon as I begin paying closer attention to where my attention goes, there’s a subtle shift.  I’m a little more here, a little less anxious and distractible, and far more certain that gratefulness is more than a passing emotion, it’s the spiritual work of a lifetime. If I’m fortunate  enough to get another thousand weeks, I want to do my best to make them count.

Already the morning has flown by. There’s nothing special here, just an empty house, a few quiet hours, my fingers hovering over the keyboard.  And yet, what a luxury it is, this gift of time. What I do with it is entirely up to me. The sunlight on the dining room table was so lovely a few minutes ago that I stood up from my laptop and snapped a picture. And now, already, the room is bathed in shadow.  If I hadn’t looked up just then, I would have missed it.  I could carry on writing for a while longer, but I could just as easily, just as happily, spend the rest of the morning watching the nuthatches and chickadees come and go outside the window.  I could bundle up and take a walk or I could call my mom and offer to bring lunch over.  Upstairs, my sewing project awaits.  As does the book on the bedside table.  There are bills to pay, a letter to write. I put laundry in after breakfast, but I haven’t done the vaccuming yet.  The possibilities are infinite, but the hours in this day are not.

Soon, too soon, the sun will set. Steve will come home, we’ll make dinner and eat by the fire, do the dishes, perhaps talk to a grown child or two, watch the last episode of Ted Lasso, and make our way upstairs to bed. Moonlight will spill across the quilt, the heat will come on, I’ll slip an arm around my husband and listen in vain for the sound of Tess’s soft snore.

It’s been two months since our sweet border collie died, but not a night passes when I don’t wish I could fill her water bowl by the bed, stroke her silky head, and gaze into her eyes just one more time before saying good night. Missing her is yet another reminder that nothing lasts. “Time, then,” as poet Wendell Berry reminds us, “is told by love’s losses, and by the coming of love, and by love continuing in gratitude for what is lost.”

And so it is that I, who have spent my entire adulthood celebrating ordinary days, find myself both hungry for more of them and, too, more determined than ever to make good use of all the days I have left.

What am I looking forward to?  When I take a moment to really consider that question, the answer is obvious: Everything.

the book, and the seconds

The moments may be fleeting but I’m always trying to find a way to hold them in my hands just a little longer.  No wonder I fell in love with the brilliant 1SE app – it allows you to stitch together the seconds of your life as they fly by.  On January 1, 2021, I began capturing moments in my garden as they unfolded, with just one photo or one second’s worth of video a day.

On days when I was away from home (usually at our family house in Maine) I’d simply take a photo of nature where ever I happened to be.  The result, just six minutes long, is so much more than I ever could have imagined when I began – both a powerful reminder of the inexorable passage of time and an intimate engagement with the world as I found it, day by day, for an entire year.

“There are two ways to live your life,” Einstein said.  “One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Clearly, I’m in the second camp. It’s a joy for me to share these glimpses of my two favorite places with you, the garden where we live and the piece of the Maine coastline that holds 45 years worth of our family’s happiest memories.  If you can, watch on a large screen.  Turn the sound up to catch the birds, the rain, the hum of bees.

 

 

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

My friends may be tired of hearing me sing the praises of Oliver Burke’s wise, wide-ranging, life-changing book Four Thousand Weeks. But so far every one who’s read it has been just as inspired as I am. If you’re longing to live more joyfully, more mindfully, and with less stress, Oliver Burke offers plenty of ideas. In the process, he invites us to renegotiate our entire relationship with time and the way we inhabit it. Hint: You’ll probably want to own this book, so you can highlight your favorite passages with abandon.  And please let me know what you think!

You can order a copy here. (This is an Amazon affiliate link.)

Listen to an engaging “On Being” conversation between Krista Tippet and Oliver Burke here.

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