The world is a lot right now.
I mean-the world has always been a lot-
maybe I'm just more aware of the profound fecundity
present in simple things right now.
In a time and place that seems to be insistent on scarcity
I keep being hit over the head with abundance.
Except with words.
I don't have a lot of words lately-
at least not the kind that hold my attention long enough
to be strung together into sentences.
There is so much to witness and process,
that I rarely feel that I've got something to add to the cacophony.
Or maybe it's all I can do to hang on myself.
Most days it's difficult to pull the tangle apart
well enough to understand my own perspective.
It feels nearly impossible to share any kind of insight.
Also, I am on the computer errr damn day from 7am until 7pm.
It's a zoom life right now and in spite of my blue-blockers
and my melatonin, I'm feeling more and more like a frantic monkey
stuck inside a space ship.
It's no secret that I'm often offended by the lies we tell ourselves-
so you won't be surprised that someone using words to hurt
themselves was the push that motivated me to come back to
the screen after hours.
Just so we're clear...I've used this same lie in the not to distant past.
I bet you have too.
I hope we all find the keys to freedom by connecting.
If I ever say something that causes you to shackle yourself
tighter with shame or heaviness-please reach out to me
so I can make amends and adjust my words.
I have a friend who is going through something hard
and she was talking about all the time she wasted
by bending and twisting herself into a situation that doesn't work.
She was full of self-judgement and shame.
She should have known (she said) that it wasn't a fit.
She should have called time earlier instead of doubling down.
She was in full blown crisis over all this wasted time
and she could not get past that to see anything else.
What a waste was said over and over.
While is is true that she spent a lot of time in a certain posture-
it is not true that the time was wasted.
Friends...NOTHING is wasted.
There are layers in this lie-
and that's part of why it's so powerful.
Sneaky lies are sometimes hardest to see.
I'm going to try and break down the layers
but it'll take a minute.
First of all-time is a human concept.
We made it up and we get to decide what it means.
We generally agree as modern humans on the hands
of the clock and how that time passes.
We've created international boundaries that
help orient the collective group so that we can
efficiently do things together.
But a second is not a real thing.
It can't be held, tasted, or felt.
Some seconds seem to drag forever,
others fall like water through a sieve.
How can you waste something that doesn't exist?
Do you know how much time you have left on this plane?
How many minutes, seconds or hours are in your account?
What does it look like to fritter away time?
Are you throwing seconds in the trash by not experiencing them?
Who qualifies the proper use of time? Do they wear a uniform?
Have a badge or an official second keeper?
Are there categories or gradients of time?
Useful through wasteful?
Where does sleeping fall? Reading fiction? Laughing?
Snuggling a baby? singing?
Does time increase in value that can be traded on some
international exchange system?
The person who decides the value of your time is you.
You're choosing how to look at that concept every single time you think of it.
Here are some questions to consider:
What if you have exactly the right amount of time?
What if the time you have is more than enough?
What if all time you have is equal in value and that value is infinite?
Next, let's talk about experiences
and how those things get processed by your personal narrator.
I think we all have our share of choices we wish we didn't make
or roads we would have preferred to have avoided.
Or those things that happened to us that weren't
a result of our own decision or active choice.
We start from an early age deciding that some
things are positive and some are negative
and this is our first step into a fundamental human
behavior: story telling.
We live and breathe in story-using it
to do incredible (and sometimes terrible) feats of magic.
Often our only novel is the story we tell
ourselves about our own life and our only audience is ourselves.
When something doesn't fit into a nice neat chapter
in that biography, we want to throw it out as part of a rough draft.
Here's the main problem with kicking out certain experiences:
you're in the middle of the story.
You can't actually see where this is going yet.
And that will forever be the answer as long as you're alive.
Trying to edit your story in real time means you're not living
the actual life in front of you.
This is why we go to therapy-because we get stuck
trying to take out chapters that hurt us or don't fit
so that we can actually move forward to new experiences.
A lot of what you learn in therapy is that you
need to accept that chapter and stop trying to
sugar coat it into something that fits better or pretending
that it didn't exist at all.
What you tell yourself about the story is often
more important than the actual events that took place.
For those of us dealing with traumatic chapters, here are a few more thoughts:
Acceptance does not mean approval.
You are the author of your story-but you are not
the omniscient controller of events.
When something terrible happens, you couldn't have changed it.
You can only change how you understand the event
and if you're trying to cut it out, you
are not allowing yourself to have the power that is actually yours.
Find a good therapist and work on yourself for as long as it takes.
That is not wasted time.
Finally, let's talk about how we assign value to experiences.
We each have an internal evaluation system
that starts assigning labels to experiences from the second
we are born.
And our brain builds from early, simplistic things
to more complicated or nuanced things.
'Food is good' grows into a preference
for certain vegetables over others.
But our overall life is not actually a linear experience.
What the baby version of you thought was
amazing will bore the adult version of you.
We are not all lamenting the wasted time
we spent pushing a walker as a toddler.
That's because we understand it was something
we needed during that time period.
We don't look at elementary children with disdain
when they become obsessed with power rangers
or Pokémon or certain book series.
We understand that's what is lighting up their brains
in this moment and we don't try to somehow make
those preferences make sense in the life we project for them
twenty years from now.
We allow them to find themselves and discard
items or ideas that don't serve them anymore.
Unfortunately, we call this childhood and stop allowing
it in ourselves at some point and that is a great mistake.
Play is as important in adults as it is in children-
it just may look a little different.
I want to be very explicit.
I'm not trying to subtly tell you that the things you experience
are all lessons that can be used.
I will tell you directly that there are LOTS of experiences
that turn out to be lessons that can be used or built on.
But not everything is a lesson sent here to teach you something
in an existential way.
Even if you manage to use it later,
not everything will be understood by you in real time.
Most things are best viewed without the lens of judgement.
Somethings just are...or were. But they were not wasted.
Nothing is wasted.
Everything is (or can be) holy.
Everything is (or can be) profane.
You get to decide.
Here are some other things that aren't wasted:
that long term relationship that didn't culminate in marriage or children
the years of marriage where neither of you honored or cherished
that terrible fight you had with your brother just before he died
the years you spent hiding in alcohol or drugs
that time binge watching Peaky Blinders with your half grown kids
the carrots whose tops got eaten by bunnies 4 times in a row
the classes you took twenty years ago that don't apply to your career
the friendship that grew distant over time
the time spent trying to decide how you want to make money
the money you spent buying love or affirmation
the award you chased that didn't result in acceptance
the energy you spent hiding abuse from those that love you
the rage you feel inside when your father starts talking politics
the time spent worshipping at a church who doesn't think you're a whole person
the love you gave that wasn't returned
the love you that still fills your heart after the person has moved on
Nothing is wasted.
What would be on your list of wasted things?
Feel free to share the chapters you're trying to rewrite
so that the power they hold over the story can be reclaimed.
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