Time is the biggest fraud there is.
It offers the promise of being a reliable and consistent friend. Always 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day (best to not dwell on the days in a year…) and yet it is so slippery and inconsistent!? An hour does not always last the same length of time! A life certainly doesn’t. And this week, wow. How are we on Saturday already? It’s been a rollercoaster ride.
Today’s pondering were supposed to be limited to an hour. I have to be up and out for a yoga class. I’ve never once written one of these posts in an hour, so I’ve been leaning into imperfection, and adapting a theme in a draft post that I started working on last summer. I’m hoping that by accompanying it with a beautiful image and clip to leave you smouldering, the dopamine and oxytocin fix will bring you back for more. With so many new authors on Substack I am grateful every week that you keep showing up for me.
Time Limited Offer
Time and life have been on my mind a lot this week. My six month temporary work permit expires soon so I’ve had to complete an application for a new one. This will allow me to work here for another fixed amount of time. I’ve not worked in a job with a fixed term for almost three decades, and it’s strange to be straddling certainty and uncertainty in a way that really we all do, all of the time, usually without thinking too much about it.
But life, and how we live it has been running through my mind because I’ve just finished a book pondering existential questions. Specifically, what it would be like if we woke up in the morning and found a box on our doorstep that contained a string showing us the length of our life. Would we open it? And with what repercussions? (The Measure, Nikki Erlick). On top of this, going to see Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy was lovely, but another poignant reminder that we’re here for now, but not one of us knows for how long.
This realisation lies at very heart of making every moment count- whilst we have to work, and wash the dishes, and put the bins out, we need savour the special moments, and bring the special into the boring ones.
How we do this can be so different. I’ve written before about shaking life up like a snow globe, and realise it’s often not an easy thing to do.
What if we each started with shaking up our Friday night?
The shake up
Rather than driving straight home after work last night, I had an urge to be by the sea and watch the sunset. I can watch it from my porch, and it’s always beautiful, but last night I wanted to go somewhere different. I followed my instincts and found myself at a beach filled with the aroma of marijuana, just as the sun was starting to set.
Sitting on a spot on the iron shore rocks that was not too spikey, feet in the sand, sloshed by the incoming waves, I watched as the day turned to night.
It was beautiful.
Image of the west bay sunset on Friday February 21st 2025
I have so many photos of sunsets on my phone, and never tire of taking more. Often they fail to capture the colour palate of the sky, so we never really know exactly what the sky actually looked like, but this photo captured it perfectly.
What might you discover if you shake your Friday night snow globe?
Waiting for Godot
I’ve never seen Samuel Becket’s play Waiting for Godot, but my understanding is that it is about two men who stand together, waiting for Godot. They’re waiting because they’ve invested hope in Godot, believing that he will bring meaning to their lives in a way they don’t yet know (see sparknotes).
Every day they are told he is not coming, but that he may come tomorrow.
Every day they wait the same thing happens.
The characters who pass the two men, and with whom they have a daily exchange, have no recollection of meeting before (the film Groundhog Day played with a similar concept).
As I say, I haven’t seen the play, but I believe the men are stuck in a state of waiting and hoping for something that doesn’t come.
Is this how we live life?
What does Godot represent?
The longed for partner? The promotion? The perfect beach body? The external validation? The six figure salary? The life purpose? Peace, love, financial security, the next exercise goal, whatever!
How much of our time have we each unwittingly spent waiting for something we desire? I’ve been listening to Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart, and it’s raised some interesting questions.
One of the themes of my writing, and central to my paid work is wellbeing. I’ve been trained in Western Psychology. From these perspectives of selfhood, what is wellbeing? There is a story of ego development, of scripts that help us to feel secure in the world, in our relationships, and ourselves, and perhaps we have found purpose and meaning.
Chodron’s words made me stop and reconsider the ideas about well-being. What if the models of psychology that have become such a significant part of our belief systems, are walking us all through a life where we are all like waiting for Godot?
Chodron suggests the search for security, comfort, and purpose are self-deception and death. A sure path to disappointment or a sense of failure. The impermanence of life means that this peace, and certainty is only going to be temporary. Life is challenging.
The Happy ever after is only really Happy right now.
Grief is inevitable. And the grief of a lost love shown in Bridget Jones is painful and palpable. Someone has died.
Yet to really live is to be willing to die over and over again, Chodron says.
We need to give up trying to feel together, and accept that we will fall apart. We can lose the things that bring us peace and a sense of well-being. We will lose our friends, our lover, our children, our peace of mind. Not because we have done anything wrong and we are deserving of these pains, but because this is what life is.
Everything is impermanent.
I often find myself getting caught up in a striving, searching way of being, and there have been some positive outcomes from this.
As a psychologist I am interested and invested in self development, growth and recovery and I am mindful that the language of self-improvement and growth, often feed off underlying stories of inadequacy. The work most needed is self-acceptance and self-compassion, rather than improvement.
Mr Darcy, the Bridget Jones version, not the one coming out of the lake in a wet shirt, utters the line-
I like you, very much, just as you are.
Relive the moment here!
How can we stand together knowing that we are enough, without looking outwards for the gifts of purpose, meaning and salvation? What might we do differently? The older I get, the clearer it becomes that a goal driven way of life distracts me from being with what is, and feeling all the feels, just as we are.
We will fall apart and we will find our way back together again. Over and over again.
This may get me cancelled, but the question I offer up today is ‘What would Bridget do?!’ She’s doing something fun, for sure!
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