I told her that I didn’t want to waste my time.
She corrected me.
“It’s not time that you want to protect—it is life. You must focus on not wasting your life.”
“Time. Life. You know what I mean!” My frustration was showing.
She took a deep, calming breath. It calmed us both.
“I want to be gentle, but precise. This is not poetry. It is accuracy.
“It can be a gentle shift that changes everything, if you are open to it.
“A reframe, if you will.”
She looked for my nod.
I gave it.
She began, “Life is not lived day by day, week by week, year by year.
“It is not even lived moment to moment, though the eternal present moment represents an adequate description of time as it truly exists.”
She paused to see if I was following. The words were certainly demanding my attention and focus.
“Time has nothing to do with living—no more than size, shape, or colour. Metres. Litres. Grams. Depth. Breadth. Height. And minutes. They are calibrations of measure, contrast, comparison, differentiation. Just one of the 5Ws. They are the tools we use to separate the parts and pieces of the whole. The parts create the whole. It is the whole that matters.” She smiled.
“Consider your game…”
She detoured into my love of baseball.
“It is the game you love, isn’t it? It’s not the time it takes to play a game. It’s not the innings or the outs or the hits. These are measurements of the play,” she sang. “The play is the beauty, the magic, the reason you watch.”
I started nodding again.
“Think of your music,” she continued. “You would never think that the length of a song, measured in minutes, can have any meaning when you are engaged in the beauty of the melody. The depth of the harmony. The journey of the notes—no matter how long in time—carries us as long as the song continues. Time disappears. It’s lost. It’s meaningless…”
I was deep into her poetry now. She knew it. She saw my trance. Then she shifted. Her words took on a dismissive staccato.
“Time is a tracking device—arbitrarily divided spaces roughly akin to the length of a thought or a beat of the heart,” she pointed at me, smiling, “which, like time, vary in speed with the intensity of emotion contained in each.”
I exhaled and fell under her spell. I could feel myself willingly releasing old ideas. She continued her reasoning.
“Time is a satisfactory measure for previous or future existence,” she lengthened the word to make her point. She straightened her posture. “Past. Long past. Last week. Last year. Next year. Next week. A thousand years from now.
“No matter. Past or future. Both are referenced and measured as a contrast from the present moment—the only moment. The only real one. Time links memory to imagination, resentment to worry, gratitude to dreaming. They are little more than machinations of the mind. Judgments of events that exist nowhere but in the mind. Neither past nor future exists right here, right now.
“Time can be a useful measure of existence, but not of life. Past and future should be used like a map—to know where you have been and where you might go. But the map is just a symbol, a representation of where you stand. And where you are—the moment you are in—HERE and NOW is all that is.”
She stared into my eyes, reached for her tea, sipped, and replaced the cup. Then she began what she really wanted to say.
“Life, when it is lived—and it should be lived—is lived choice by choice. You may not want to waste your time. But you waste your life when you do not make choices. When you simply exist. When you go through those minutes mindlessly, repeating the same old actions, the same old habits, following the instructions of an empty voice that is not yours and that you don’t recognize.
“Habits, routines, obligations, and schedules—those are the drivers of existing. You know you are only existing when your actions are determined by a clock. When you are afraid of being late, or yearning for something that happens tomorrow or next year. Or when others are the beneficiaries of your time and energy based on an hourly wage. That is not living.”
She paused.
“That is a waste of life. That is how most get through the days and weeks and years. Only discovering ‘later’ that their life happened, and they didn’t live it.
“You can’t have time. It is a measure, not a thing. You can’t have litres or pounds, but you can have water or cheese. You can take time, waste time, use time. But it is the living—or not living—in that time that matters. You are living and breathing right now. So what will you do with that life?”
She anticipated my questions.
“What is choice?” she asked.
I tilted my head and gestured for her to continue.
“It starts with the awareness of the potency of life. You—your very nature—are the potential, the endless possibility. The waiting void in which nothing exists, but anything could be.”
She sat up and seemed to inflate with excitement. Her energy carried me up.
“Whether you realize it or not, you chose to be here. That choice created a whole world around you.”
“You are talking metaphysics now, Nan.” She didn’t flinch.
“That choice was an explosive act of creation—putting in motion a whole world to play in. Your world, filled with creation and with not-yet-imagined creations for you to engage, experience, and expand. You are choice waiting to be made.” She pointed at my chest.
She locked her eyes on mine, seeking the moment of my enlightenment.
“So here I am. Ya-hoo! Look at me!” I felt befuddled, not enlightened. I wanted to cry. “What now?”
She sighed at my sarcasm and lovingly held my cheek in her palm.
“You are lost in a sea of ‘should.’ Thinking there is a right way and a wrong way,” she paused, “a safe way and an unsafe way.”
She walked to the fridge, took out the tuna and bread, and started to make us sandwiches. She took a deep breath.
“These are ideas that have been imposed on you by a thousand frightened children—seeking what might be right, afraid to be wrong—seeking to guide you with fear and love.”
“Ha,” I moaned. “You mean Mom and Dad and school and church and TV and…”
She ignored me and continued.
“You have been born into a culture. That is a challenge you chose. You have come to learn to choose in a world that punishes choices. You are not alone, but your individuality makes it a challenge you must engage for yourself.”
She looked me in the eye.
“Yes, this culture, this society, has been created around having instead of being. Believing that having makes you safe and not having makes you worthless. Having certain things, doing certain things—good. Not having, not doing—bad. It is a whole system of values that value nothing of value.”
“And it’s rigged,” I added.
“Yes, but you have to see through that,” she snapped back at me. “That is a distraction from the true goal.” She turned back to the sandwiches and continued.
“Others are running around in a panic, doing what others have told them to do and having what others have told them to have, and protecting what others told them to protect. They are constantly looking over their shoulder to see if others approve, and looking down to see if their pile of stuff is big enough yet. And they feel empty. They make no choices for themselves—about themselves—so they are not really living.”
She smirked and laughed. “And time passes, as it always does.”
She shook her head. She drifted off, thinking.
“So…” I started up again.
She looked at me, puzzled.
“How is Choice my alternative?” I asked.
She nodded and put the sandwiches down. They looked good.
She took my hand. I knew this was it.
“Inside you—if you quiet your mind and embrace your infinite potential—you can rediscover your Will. The incredible force of life. The joy. The love of living. Let every thought, everything, fall away, and in that emptiness you can find your desire to live. That Will is the choice that brought you here, now.
“Find, and sit in, your love of life. You will eventually discover that there are two compelling forces within your Will: curiosity and creativity.
“They will need to be reactivated. You have held them dormant, as all of us do.
“Curiosity is your uniqueness. The questions you have. The understandings you seek. The ‘What if’s’ of your unique preferences and desires. Your curiosity will compel you. Questions asked must be answered. They cannot sit unaddressed. They will eat at you—you can feel how they already do. That is the source of your sadness.
“Creativity is our common nature. We are expanding beings. We reach out and extend. We create. Our natural state is love. Love is the force of extension, of creation.
“Follow your curiosity. Choose to answer your questions. Create from your heart. Choose to create with what you find.
“Choice comes from your most authentic self, your most genuine desires—your need to create.
“Choice is the act of living.”
She walked to the tap and filled two glasses with water. She placed one in front of me while sipping from the other.
“Take off your watch, eat your lunch, consider the possibilities, pick something, and go for it.”
She kissed me on the forehead, smiled, and said, “I love you.”
