How I’ve made peace with time …

"... it’s amazing the gifts 
that come with now 
the sweet smell 
of morning air 
the sound of wind 
through trees 
sunshine warming skin 
so much it sighs ..." 

As I was approaching retirement, literally everyone I spoke to who was already on the other side of that journey told me, “I honestly don’t know where I found the time to work”, or “I’m busier now than ever …!”  I’m sure this will sound familiar to most.  If you are not retired yourself, you will undoubtedly know someone who is, and you will have heard these or similar comments.  

Time is a funny thing isn’t it?  It feels elastic and unsteady.  I remember my dad telling me when I reached the grand age of 25, that future years would go faster and faster.  At the time, I didn’t believe him.  Surely, time is time, it’s fixed: so how can that make sense?  But, turns out, he was right.  I’ve certainly felt like time has passed at an increasingly alarming rate as I’ve ticked off the decades.  

My relationship with time hasn’t always been a positive one.  Looking back, it has led to stress and anxiety.  Why?  Because I’ve tried to chase it, contain it, understand it.  All of it unsuccessfully.  I’ve tried to make friends with it, filling it with things I love to do, negotiating with it how to divide up pockets of my day, in an effort to be more productive.  Gosh, it sounds exhausting doesn’t it? 

It was all fuelled by good intention, that’s the thing.  I’ve never been one of those people who constantly complained about the lack of time.  Rather, I approached it with positivity, hoping I think to love-bomb it into submission.  It didn’t work. 

Finally, in my 60th year, I think I’ve cracked the secret.  I’ve made my peace with time.  I’ve realised that I can’t control it, I can only respond to it.  Goodness knows why it took me so long!  During my recent travels, my relationship with time changed, in a positive way.  I accepted time for what it was: inevitable and therefore, in some ways, irrelevant.  I didn’t have to negotiate with it, or try to understand it.  I just had to let it be, and get on with my life regardless.  It felt so liberating!  

Don’t get me wrong, I know that time cannot simply be ignored.   I was taught from the earliest age that punctuality mattered greatly; I still believe that.  To turn up late is a sign of disrespect in my book.  We’d live in a world of chaos if we didn’t operate according to a 24 hour clock.  We need to know when to turn up for a train, when to attend a scheduled appointment and, most importantly, what time to take a cake out of the oven! 

All that said, I’ve stopped trying to pack as much into my day as I can.  I’ve let go of planning every minute of my life.  It’s okay not to have plans and to simply respond to your mood.  It’s refreshing to change your mind about your day based, for example, on the weather.  It can be hugely rewarding to have space in your diary, so that if a friend contacts you to say, “are you free for a coffee?”, you can actually say yes!  

Someone once told me that the greatest gift you can bestow on another is the gift of time.  I’ve spent my life doing just that and, for the most part, gifting my time to others willingly with love.  But what I’ve started to do increasingly is gift myself.  I’ve made a conscious decision to do my best to live in the moment.  I know, I know, it sounds so corny.  But if being alive to my surroundings, conscious of how I am feeling right now, is corny, then so be it.  I’m as much at peace with that as with time itself.