A LIFE THAT TAKES ITS TIME, PART II

"Do Your Best to Enjoy Today"

After all why not?  Why would we ever put NO EFFORT into enjoying our day? We owe ourselves that much.  This week a friend made room for four of us on her patio.  With all the time now to tend and putter at home, her garden was perfect.  Shady, weeded, bursting with color (bright blue hydrangeas), with paths, stone borders and a bubbling fountain.
 

Blue Hydrangea

We all got caught up on how we're coping and who we're missing.  A needed break from the news cycle, which is worse than it has been in many of our lifetimes.  (I'm not going to talk about the disconnect between our president congratulating himself while we have the highest death tally in the world . . . Well, OK, but that one sentence is it.) 

Last night other friends with a lovely back garden, au naturel with volunteer seedlings, wild violets and a hodge podge of paving stones, brick and weathered concrete, had us over.  I feel grateful. 

 

Then this afternoon I went back to Irene and Astrid's A Book that Takes its Time ("A Life that Takes its Time," 6/17/20) and came across these lines from a poem by Octavio Paz (1914-1998), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1990:

  "All is visible and all elusive,

 all is near and can't be touched. . . . 

Time throbbing in my temples repeats 

the same unchanging syllable of blood.

. . .                 

Motionless, 

I stay and go:  I am a pause."

               Between Going and Staying

I think this feels like now. I too am a pause some days.  Things can seem near but unreachable.  The poem is bittersweet. 

Then this: 

   Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone. 

This charming book also has a chapter on why we might want to leave our comfort zones.  The author, journalist Caroline Buijs, writes that everyone needs to go on having new experiences if only because they make our lives seem longer.   I never thought of that as a reason for new experiences. Of course, we've all had to postpone many of our anticipated ventures for this year.  But I think it's true that we have also found ways to expand our worlds and that having time to think is something we can use to our advantage. 

I like some of our new habits: entertaining just a few friends at a time and outdoors; shopping quickly and less often; more time with the person I love. Many of us even like having fewer choices. We're all finding new ways to cope with uncertainty, some quite simple like today:  Saturday afternoon skillet-popped corn and a movie.  I hope you're enjoying your day too. 

Midsummer Geranium

  

   

  

A LIFE THAT TAKES ITS TIME

Somehow we believe  our lives are more worthwhile when we do as much as possible.  There must be research on this.  Our Puritan heritage?  The status of busyness?  For many, most of the day is planned time. True for me for most of my life. 

I was given a lovely present, A Book that Takes its Time by Irene Smit and Astrid Van Der Hulst.  It seems like the perfect present for these days.  In North Carolina coronavirus cases are still rising and my life is the most unhurried it has ever been.  Same with the rest of our family.  On-line summer art classes; working from home; child care; walking the dogs; weighing who we can visit with and where.  The children have been told that Fall semester will be distance learning again.  So although life is crazy there is also more time to breathe.  Right now my husband and I are sheltering at the beach where nothing much needs doing.  I hope your mind has a chance to clear too.  

This book has pull-outs, punch-outs and fill-ins.  Among them are 48 Notecards on which to write a Beautiful Moment.  

I love filling these in.  I went back in time for some moments, ones that are precious.  Like, May 2005:  my son calling to say "No son ever loved a mother more than I love you."  (That may be my lifetime #1.)  Another from May 2005:  when I told my mom, "Mom, we have no issues," and it was true, always true.  

Other simpler recurring Beautiful Moments:  my husband making my morning tea; sunset from our Adirondack chairs;  when I hear the words, "Hi Grandma."   I wrote one today.  "Today I found 20 Augers!"  Those little predatory marine sea snails that leave a spiral shell that resembles a slender screw or an auger.  I like to think it takes a trained eye to spot that many in the piles of broken shells left after the tide recedes. 

Today's Treasures

I have a large decorative bottle full that belonged to my mother.  I imagine her bending and picking up each one, then washing it and dropping it through the narrow mouth into the bottle. 

If you have some time, try remembering your Beautiful Moments.  Where could you keep them?  On craft paper in a tin or jar?  Part of taking care of ourselves.

There's also a chapter in the book by Lissette Thooft (Dutch writer, b. 1953) about another way to live more slowly.  It has to do with waiting for things--sort of like we are now.  Waiting to see friends, waiting to travel, waiting to hug each other when greeting, waiting for a vaccine, for normalcy, in America waiting for the presidential election . . . .   While our waiting now is nothing any of us particularly want, in general, experts say,  anticipation is good for us; anticipation produces dopamine, the chemical that makes us feel good.  Things and experiences gain value when we wait for them.  We've all noticed that haven't we?  What we may have taken for granted 6 months ago we now yearn for. 

The instant gratification we've become accustomed to may be a form of greed.  I know I can get almost angry just watching my computer buffer.  Perhaps patience is a kind of generosity  People who can have whatever they want as soon as they want it may end up feeling empty and disappointed (or in debt). Waiting for something good may bring us greater satisfaction.  The quiet enjoyment of a goal reached.  It may make us realize that life is worth waiting for.  

More on this charming book later.  

 






    



  

  














 

TODAY, A DAY OF NOURISHMENT

Some days I wake up and think no news, just the good stuff.  Admittedly that's easier at the beach.  More good stuff here.  For most of today the sea and sky were the same steely gray.  Nothing wrong with that.  Now it's brighter and there's a horizon in view.  

So what good thing to do on a gray day with an hour or two home alone?  I wrote.  I'm taking part in a clinical study sponsored by Duke Integrative Medicine on the benefits of expressive writing in a time of crisis.   I hadn't before keyed into the idea of expressive writing as writing just for ourselves.  Wide-open, so to speak, about our feelings and emotions rather than factually writing about events, memories, objects or people.  Of course the events, memories, etc. are there, the underpinnings of our feelings.  Our feelings and emotions are about something. 

I didn't write today as part of the study; that writing is only done together, in a weekly 90-minute Zoom session with professionally designed prompts.  But like that writing, this would be read by no one but me. 

One psychologist says that writing can sometimes be better for our mental health than seeing a therapist.  Not sure about that, but I get her point.  It can be hard to be vulnerable and honest with another person, any person. Too many layers, too much background, too expensive, too exposed, possibly hurtful . . . .  But writing what no one else sees can be as honest as our minds are capable of.  A way to process experiences, stressors and thoughts that costs not one penny.  If we're writing about something that bothers us, it's out of our head and on the paper.  I suppose we could even take the paper, fold it up and put it somewhere if we wanted a symbolic action of removal. 

If we're writing our feelings of gratitude, how much more vivid they become when we search and tag our lives for the things that buoy us.  Professionals say that writing improves our immune systems as well as our minds.  I know that I immediately become calmer when I open my Prayer Journal--I remind myself of Pavlov's dogs (or my own):  stimulus/response.  My breathing slows, my body settles in the chair.  Yoga, mindfulness, exercise, prayer, writing, nature, meditation--all benefits to mind, body and spirit.  What else?

So today has been a day of nourishment.  Like the balance I wrote about a couple of days ago ("A Crazy Balanced Life, Even Now," 6/8/20).  The news will be there tomorrow.  For today, writing, a healthy lunch, walking the dog in the rain, publishing this post . . . and it's still early.  I hope all is going well for you too.                          
                                                        Nina Naomi

PS.  "If someone you love, real or imaginary, were feeling just as you are, what encouragement would you give them?"  It's an awesome prompt!  Write for 10 minutes.