Latley I’ve been flooded with childhood memories. But not vivid ones.
Vague.
Dreamy.
More sensation than imagery.
Being lifted out of a carseat I’ve fallen asleep in.
A cup of warm water poured over my soapy hair.
Weightlessly flying.
And then returning to the sturdy hand of my dad pushing me on a swing.
Being a child is so visceral because time doesn’t exist. There is no one and nothing to show up for. My oldest daughter, three, has a handle on verbal markers of time - today, tomorrow, yesterday. She knows the days of the week. She understands that these word are connected to the rhythm of her life, but conceptually it hasn’t clicked. And I LOVE IT.
Sometimes she calls bedtime her nap.
“After my nap, we’ll go to the park” she says as I tuck her in at 7:30pm.
“Yesterday, Gigi came to visit for Harper’s birthday,” she reminisces.
Harper’s birthday was in July.
“It’s Friday! I need my tap shoes for dance on Friday!!!”
It’s Wednesday. Dance is on Monday.
I love this because it draws me into her world, a world of everlasting present. There is no projection into the past or the future. There is only complete absorption in whatever’s in front of her. “A doodlebug!!! LOOK, it’s crawling!!!”
In the aftermath of a loss, I am able access gratitude more deeply and in an instant. I am able to lock into the present moment. I am able to let go of stories about the past and plans for the future with much more ease. I have noticed, also, that my capacity to feel a feeling fully, to let it pique and watch it dissipate, is as advanced as it’s ever been. Wonder washes over me. I return to center. Grief washes over me. I return to center. Fear washes over me. Anxiety. Excitement. Anticipation. I return. I return. I return.
In some ways, I feel like a child again. I’ve let go of so much. My work. A PhD. A pregnancy. A plan for how this season of my life parlays into the next.
I happily enter my daughter’s world, where time is unmoored. Monday is Friday. Afternoon is night. Tomorrow is next year. I don’t feel the sinking purposelessness, the constant questioning there. I don’t feel trapped by my own looping inquiries. I crouch down and look at the doodle bug. “WOW, look at that!,” I say, taking in its hair-like legs. Its segmented, undulating body.
I’ve been reading Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals which sounds like a gross productivity book a la The Four Hour Work Week, but is not. In fact, it talks back to the whole productivity, time optimization, life hack genre. The author, Oliver Burkman, unpacks how we arrived at our current conception on time, leaning on psychology, philosophy, and spiritual teachings. He says we see time as an entity separate from us, an abstract timeline across which our life plays out. Burkman, uses Edward Hall’s helpful image of “time as a conveyer belt that’s constantly passing us by. Each hour or week or year is like a container being carried on the belt, which we must fill as it passes” to demonstrate our deeply entrenched cultural perception of time. From this perspective, time is a resource to be manipulated and mastered. “It stops being merely the water in which you swim and turns into something you feel you need to dominate or control, if you’re to avoid feeling guilty, panicked, and overwhelmed.” Of course the modern world requires an agreed upon method of time, but what this book gifted me was a reminder of the magic in accessing timelessness, in “being time” instead of chasing it. In letting our lives unfold, “forgetting the abstract yardstick and plunging back into the vividness of reality instead.”
With love,
Stephanie
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P.S. Speaking of time, I am working on a piece called “A Human House: Rejecting the Sterility of Instagram Interiors” that I wanted to write and send out today, but needs more time! I am finding it difficult to write longer form pieces given that my windows for writing are brief! As I work on this piece, I’d love to hear about your relationship with designing/decorating/renovating your apartment/house! Do you get obsessed? Do you find yourself wrapped up in the idea of your home as a perfected design statement? Do you change one thing and then want to change everything? Do you struggle to figure out what you like without relying on the trends circulating online?Do you want it all to be done and perfect and clean all at once and RIGHT NOW?! Let me know.
Love this. That book is so precious. It made me remember I love cooking! Since I had my son (also 3) I had been conquering cooking, planning and prepping and freezing. Then I read that book and realised that I love the craft, it was such permission to come back to just enjoying the simplicity of the moment. And, I also love the concept of time coming from a 3 year old, so magic.
Your daughter’s take on time is enchanting. This piece shook my worldview with the stark reminder that we only get four thousand weeks on this earth. Why waste any of it being too busy, too worried, or too stressed to enjoy the miracle? It sounds cliché when I say it, but your words have unlocked something profound for me, and you’ve done it so beautifully.
Could there be anything more important today than the doodle bug?
(I wrote an entire essay about a bug a few weeks ago, so I may be a bit biased.)