Image by Rosalia Ricotta from Pixabay
Imagine living through the heartbreak of a loved one’s death. Add to it that the death was violent and painful because, in fact, you loved one was murdered. Enough already, right? Okay one last thing: now imagine no one ever solved the crime.
I watch some of those true crime shows. The documentary style ones where the family grants consent for the film makers and then they and the victim’s friends are interviewed The ones where years pass before an arrest is made or the full story is known. It’s so unbelievable and so unfair how someone’s murder is unsolved for ages. Somehow the family has to move on during that time. Continue to do laundry, go to work, pay the light bill. Put up the Christmas tree.
I used to think my interest in such things was due to the compelling personal stories of the victims and their families. And that’s definitely part of it. But there’s an additional, real fascination I discovered recently. It’s that very idea of time; specifically of so much time slipping away. Days, months, years passing. And nothing changes.
And it’s not just cold cases where this happens. We see it all around us. Someone who has been in prison for twenty years. Or at the same job for decades. Maybe living in one house for a whole life. Something about the sameness of each of all those thousands of days is so strange. Even oppressive. Life literally went by and people were at their desks or keeping house or in a cell the whole time and didn’t even notice.
Of course it doesn’t escape me that I myself have worked the same job for eighteen years now. Have I just been living the same day over and over again? Is time slipping by for me and I’m not even noticing?
As a teacher, I get more time off than most people. And there are definitely seasons to the school year that help break up the routine. But like most people who work, I find I barely get all my chores done on the job and at home before it’s time to fall into bed. Then it happens all over again just a few hours later.
I feel good when I check off my to-do lists. Or empty my inbox. When I retrieve and deal with the mail in the same day. But is this what life is? Surely it’s not, yet it’s where all my time is going: chores, tasks, minutiae. The days blend together because they are too often the same. Did I go by the post office yesterday? Last week? Was my doctor’s appointment three days ago? A month? Who knows?
There are articles and reddit threads and quora groups that address this observation and they all say essentially the same thing: do something different! Take a new route to work; listen to music you ordinarily wouldn’t like. Make new friends. Turn off the TV. Put your phone down. None of which is exactly bad advice but it honestly just seems like bandaids
I’ve written about slowing down time before. And my blog hero at raptitude.com has as well. This post examines how our days become too similar and downright monotonous. How time can weigh heavily on us. If we let it. There is no cure for the relentlessness of time nor the fear that it is slipping away: except to recognize it.
It’s time to acknowledge these concerns I have and instead of fighting them, simply notice them. Let them be. And decide to recommit to the actions that make me feel better about my days and what fills them.
At least for now I have to continue to work at my job, so instead of resisting it I’m going to relax and handle it. It doesn’t really take up that much time and I still have moments during a typical day to myself for lunch or planning. I need to remember that and welcome those times.
And honestly I need to be grateful for my work. It’s allowed me to travel, have a nice home, raise a child, and nurture dozens of pets over the years. It will eventually have paid me enough to retire from it. It’s not so bad.
In fact, it’s really the time I’m not working that I sometimes worry about. Those days I don’t feel like doing anything so I don’t. Will those days accumulate too much? I don’t know for certain, but I do know that there aren’t too many of them right now. And besides, I feel really rested after one or two aimless days. Maybe they happen because they should.
Perhaps this occasional awareness is enough of an audit to be sure the years don’t slip by like “sands through the hourglass.” To be sure I have a lucky and happy life. Seeing that is, itself, a gift. Maybe a bunch more years of the same thing would be pretty cool.