Alexandersmap

    Tag: Tempus Fugit

    • For Now

      “Eternal means timeless—no time. The human mind cannot understand that. The human mind can understand time and can deny time. What is timeless is beyond our comprehension. Yet the mystics tell us that eternity is right now. How’s that for good news? It is right now.” — Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      I’ve wrestled with time all of my adult life. I must be on time for the things I’ve scheduled, and on time for me is always early. I’m married to someone with a different idea of time, and the two of us have managed to peacefully coexist for a few decades despite the chasm this represents in my mind. Time matters a great deal in our world, but not in the universe. We can read that statement and know the truth of it while also dismissing it as irrelevant in our daily lives. Both can be true even as we operate in the absolutes of our beliefs.

      January felt like a longer month than its allotted thirty-one days. Blame it on winter and outrage if you’d like, but often it comes down to how present we are with the moment we occupy. When we feel swept up in events, time feels fleeting. We may feel we’re wasting it, or that it’s slipping through our hands. How much of this young year felt beyond our capacity to influence it?

      We know we have no time to waste time. We aren’t eternal ourselves, we merely exist, for now, in eternity. Having an expiration date means we must learn to appreciate the shelf life we’re given. To honor the eternity of this now by doing something with it. Time is ours now. Someday shockingly soon it will be someone else’s time. Eternity marches on indifferently just the same. So we must to do what calls for us—one now at a time.

    • Time Is Our Treasure

      If I could make days last forever
      If words could make wishes come true
      I’d save every day like a treasure and then
      Again, I would spend them with you
      — Jim Croce, Time in a Bottle

      When I was younger, I felt that time flew by. Now my kids talk about how quickly time flies. One day maybe I’ll have grandchildren making the observation. Humans have been making this observation since our brains developed to discern such things as time and our place in it. Tempus fugit.

      We’re told to treasure each day, for each is the most valuable thing we can spend. Time is our treasure. Some spend frivolously, some frugally. We ourselves work to maximize our days, but still see too much of our time slip away. We aren’t meant to have it all, maybe just enough. All we can do is the best we can with it.

      Awareness seems to be the magic ingredient for savoring. We develop a taste for living when we view it all as buried treasure in the sands of time. What lies hidden from us is revealed day-by-day, captured in photographs and memories. Our treasure is as substantial as we make it.

    • More and Less

      “By doing less, you might accomplish more.” — Simon Sinek

      Not that long ago, I decided I hadn’t read enough books this year. It wasn’t a matter of not reading, it’s just that the books I was reading were pretty weighty affairs that took a lot to get through. Serious books, if you will. I still have some of those serious books awaiting my attention, but I’ve mixed in some more fiction recently to make reading more enjoyable again. Reading isn’t a chore, after all, it’s a privilege available to all of us who follow the light.

      We measure our lives through the lens of more and less. I’ve been reading plenty, but not plenty of books. A shift to more pleasurable reading is meant to kindle the fire, if one needs intention at all, but it’s also more fun than slogging through more academic reads. We only have so many hours in the day for someone’s thesis. We must enjoy the pages as we must enjoy our days.

      We can’t expect more than the 24 hours in the day, but we can use those 24 hours better with less: Less distraction, less overindulgence in habits that slow our body and mind, less of the habits we’ve carved out time for that aren’t offering the return on investment we once thought they would. Our reward is more: more productive creativity in our chosen path, more engagement with people who matter most, more energy to tackle the bold pursuits we aspire to add to our days.

      We’re running out of days in the year. It’s a wonder how time flies so quickly. Tempus fugit. We don’t know how many more days we’ll have, just that it’s less than what we had yesterday. Given that, we ought to take seriously these questions of more and less, and work to optimize our time, well, more.

    • A Sense of Our Season

      “The follies which a person regrets the most in his life, are those which he didn’t commit when he had an opportunity.” — Helen Rowland

      What season are we in? I don’t mean autumn (as this is published), I mean what season of life are we in? There are things we regret not doing in each season of our life carrying us to here, and things we celebrate having done before that door closed forever. The trick is developing a sense of our season and learning to optimize wherever we are now.

      Lingering in the past is either a comforter that warms us or an albatross weighing us down. Either way, it’s not serving us today. We may know that our past decisions created who we are now, whatever that looks like for us, but it only influences tomorrow to the extent that we keep holding on to whatever we’re carrying. Previous choices are merely lessons learned that must be invested in our decisions going forward. Just learn the most important lesson: don’t make the same mistakes over and over again.

      I’ve reached a point where I don’t want to carry the weight of what a younger version of me didn’t do once in another season and instead focus on doing what I can do in the now. For me, comfortable routines were always the whisper of what felt like reason holding me back from adventures I might have taken. Knowing that tendency within me, I simply ask myself whether the next step is towards comfort or adventure, and which will I regret not taking one day in my future? What’s the worst that can happen? It’s usually not all that bad, and probably not as bad as carrying regret for the rest of our days.

      The currency of our lives are time, wealth and health, and we spend what we have in each season. Saving for the future makes some sense (we all like having a nest egg), but some currency can never be used in future seasons and can’t be wasted by not spending it now. Health is a good example of that. A younger, more fit version of me toyed with the idea of running a marathon. Those days are long gone now. Will I regret not having run one on my deathbed? Probably not, but the fact is I missed my chance.

      We may never have just the right amount of health, wealth and time, but we may have just enough of each to do something special with the season we’re in. And whatever that season is, we ought to do more with it, simply because we may not have the right ratio of currency in future seasons. And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Do something special with this season before it’s gone, when all we’re left with are regrets.

    • Just the Right Blend

      “I have learned to live each day as it comes and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow.” — Dorothy Dix

      I took a long walk in Manhattan yesterday. It’s all relative of course, but it felt pretty long towards the end of it. If I were on some country path with comfortable shoes I’d have just been warming up, but on concrete sidewalks swarming with people, while wearing dress shoes and a sport coat, a mile walk feels kinda long. I’ll surely need to take a true long walk when I get home just to make up for even admitting to that mile feeling uncomfortable, but all experiences are measured by the minutiae that built it.

      My underlying hope in navigating my series of nows is to find just the right blend of minutiae to make each moment sparkle. We’re building tomorrow’s memories with each today, aren’t we? What goes into today’s blend will fuel our future or set us back. We ought to discriminate on the little things that make now memorable.

      Sure, know the forecast when packing for our future, but don’t wring away the present in apprehension. We can’t borrow time, but we can waste it just as easily as we can optimize it. Those tomorrows will come either way, even if we aren’t guaranteed a starring role in the play. We must accept the fragility of now and offer it our very best, lest we squander it. Not every moment is perfect, we can’t expect that, but we can seek perfection anyway, and celebrate the higher standard we reach.

    • An Iterative Process

      Across the evening sky
      All the birds are leaving
      But how can they know
      It’s time for them to go?
      Before the winter fire
      I will still be dreaming
      I have no thought of time
      For who knows where the time goes?
      Who knows where the time goes?
      — Fairport Convention, Who Knows Where the Time Goes      ?

      Here we go again. October has flown just like the other months, and we find ourselves in November once again. The oak leaves have completely coated the lawn, just a few days after I picked up the first round of leaves. So it must be, autumn cleanup is an iterative process, not ever one and done unless you wait for Thanksgiving weekend, and there are other chores reserved for that timeframe. I wonder at people who choose a lifestyle with no chores, for the sheer amount of available time they must fill. I suppose I’d just read more or play pickle ball or something. But that’s not for me. There’s beauty in the labor we opt into.

      October was one of my most productive and transformative months of the year in many ways, but it’s all last month’s news now. We must begin again today with whatever momentum yesterday gave to us. Each day brings an opportunity to be fully alive and present, whatever that means to us. My day begins with the keyboard—the first of several habits that steer me towards purposeful and productive living. Today will fly by like all the rest, the only question is what will we remember of it? What will carry us into tomorrow a little better than we arrived at today?

      I’ve been told I dwell on productivity too much, and that may be an ongoing theme of this blog, but productivity means something different to each of us. Productivity to me isn’t giving my life to a job, it’s doing something with my life. Productivity is simply building a system for living that brings positive momentum to our lives. Those grains of sand will keep falling through the hourglass far too quickly for our liking (tempus fugit). We can accept that time is flying by and with our awareness begin to realize our place in eternity. Discovering our purpose is an iterative process too. We may do something meaningful in our given time, built one step at a time.

    • Action is Identity

      “Creators create. Action is identity. You become what you do. You don’t need permission from anybody to call yourself a writer, entrepreneur, or musician. You just need to write, build a business, or make music. You’ve got to do the verb to be the noun.” ― Chase Jarvis, Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life

      If action is identity, so too is inaction. What we say yes to and what we say no to are each a part of who we are. It’s inherently obvious, yet so easy to forget in the day-to-day demand for our time played to the soundtrack of the well-meaning who only want the best for us (thanks a bunch for that). We must pause a beat and get our bearings, then get back to the climb to our potential.

      If I could offer a bit of unsolicited advice to myself, to my children and anyone else paying attention, it’s to simply follow the call for as long as we can get away with it until we meet that person we envisioned. The only way forward is to do that thing. To write, to build, to make: action is our identity. It’s that vote for the person we wish to become that James Clear reminded us of.

      And so a bias towards action is the not-so-secret way to reach the promised land. Hitting the lottery is a fool’s game, hitting our stride by doing the things we know we need to do is how we live fully. We’ve been gifted with being born at a time and place where possibility flows. The people telling us that this is a time of scarcity are getting wealthy with words. There’s an audience for everything, even that thing that we’re telling ourselves to go be. Decide what to be and go be it, as the song goes.

      We ought to give ourselves a gift these last few months of the year. Do the creative work and put it out there for the world to see. Make a bold statement in who we will be today, and build on it in our following days should we blessed with enough of them. Tempus fugit: time flies. Do it now before it all slips away. If action is identity, just what will we think of ourselves if we don’t act now?

    • Making Full Use of the Decade

      “Don’t try to be young. Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won’t live long enough to find out about, but I’m still curious about them. You know people who are already saying, ‘I’m going to be 30—oh, what am I going to do?’ Well, use that decade! Use them all!”
 — Betty White

      If life is a series of time buckets, we ought to be making the most of each bucket we happen to reside in at this particular stage of our life. My entire life transformed from 10 to 20, and again from 20 to 30, and so on to now. The decade I’m in has been revelatory for the transformation it has brought to my life and for the speed with which it’s going by. It all flies by, we just have to make full use of the time.

      Each decade is a climb, and climbs are filled with setbacks, false summits, detours and exhausting ascents that seem to go on forever without relief. Alternatively, we might look at the decade as meandering through a maze, encountering all sorts of interesting or even terrifying paths, with a series of dead ends we must back away from, before we reach the other side. Whatever life means to us, it ought to be exhilarating and interesting as we begin each day, for this stage of our lives is rapidly coming to an end, and the next is just around the corner.

      The key is staying interested, as Betty White pointed out, and with our interest sparked getting fired up for the next. To explore what lies just beyond where we’ve been thus far is a lifetime adventure which we can all subscribe to. Be bold! This next decade will fly by too, and what will our memories be then? We must exploit each leap into the unknown for all it offers in order to live a full life.

    • Time Enough

      “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” — Rabindranath Tagore

      We often get hung up on time and how quickly it all flies by. Yet we have more than enough for one lifetime when we use it well. We just waste so very much of it on things that aren’t all that essential. The moment is all that matters, we keep telling ourselves, and yet we measure time. The instant we recognize the fragility of the moment and our place in it, the more we begin to fully live. This is everything, all at once, and it’s a wonder to behold.

      This morning I reconciled myself to spending money and time on a problem that I inadvertently created several years ago. To spend money and time on things that I once thought were finished forever is frustrating, but instead of getting spun up in the error I’m finding joy in the resolution of the problem. With every decision we have the opportunity to set the future straight. We may celebrate this and move on to the next.

      As a rower I know the value of the current stroke in setting up the next one. Effort and recovery are forever linked in a quest for that elusive perfection. A life well spent isn’t all about the highlight reel stuff seen on Instagram, it’s the daily grind and the challenges we overcome that we may live to fight another day. Effort, recovery and setting ourselves up for the next—again and again. Stitch together enough such moments and we may build something meaningful that transcends the ordinary.

      We have time enough, even as we wish for more. Aspire to make more of the moment instead of wishing for more moments. Excellence is found here, awaiting our rise to meet it.

    • September Song

      Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December
      But the days grow short
      When you reach September
      When the Autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
      One hasn’t got time for the waiting game
      — Frank Sinatra, September Song

      Labor Day Weekend in the United States is the unofficial end of summer. That in itself isn’t particularly remarkable, but I feel compelled to remark on the fact that it’s now September. In general I love September for the crisp air and epic sunsets that seem to come with it, but that’s tinged with the reality of shorter days and a realization that we never really do everything we wanted to do with summer before it’s gone. Alas, we can’t do it all. We must simply be deliberate about doing the things we most want to do with the time we have.

      There’s a Latin phrase that is often found on sundials, “Serius est quam cogitas”, which means, “It’s later than you think.” We must remember this and live with purpose each day, that we may look back on the season recently passed and feel we didn’t miss the boat. We can’t change seasons already passed, but we can feel the urgency to do something with today. We’re all familiar with that other Latin call to the moment, carpe diem, and ought to embrace it more for the desperate call to pay attention it was meant as. Indeed, we must seize the day before it fades away in our memory with all that is lost.

      Yesterdays carry us to today, either as a stepping stone or a slide into oblivion. I’d rather be climbing, wouldn’t you? Writing saves more of my days than reminding myself to get to it already. Writing anchors me to the moment, forcing me to pay attention to something tangible in the time I have available and do with it what I can. Last week was a series of late, often frenetic posts inserted into spare moments in airports and hotel rooms. Finding something that anchors us to the day makes the day less likely to float away like all the rest. A blog post, a moment shared with people of consequence, a bold act of self-determination and a nod to the time passing by are things we can hold on to.