What Does It Feel Like to Have Enough Time?
This month's message, graced by a little rainbow. Photo by Quinn Corte, 2024.
What Does It Feel Like to Have Enough Time?
I listen to records now.
For Christmas my husband and I got a new record player and three boxes of my parents’ records from the ‘60s and ‘70s. I’m shocked by how much I’m enjoying the whole thing. I listen to music on Spotify all the time and could hear any of these songs in two seconds on my phone. But this is so different.
I love how tactile and experiential it is. Records are such a ritual: choosing an album, bantering about the band, handling the disc, really listening. I’m now one of those obnoxious people who says, “It just sounds better on vinyl.”
The records have brought us together. Slowed us down. We’re watching less weeknight TV and having more conversations about music. We’ve also been visiting used record shops to flip through hundreds of dusty albums and chat with weirdo record store owners.
It’s a highly inconvenient hobby. You have to really dig through the stacks of records to find what you want. And when you’re listening, you have to get up all the time! The record constantly needs to be flipped or swapped.
Becoming “record people” is wasting a lot of our time. But the inconvenience and slowness is actually…refreshing.
I heard a phrase recently that’s been having its way with me:
Actually, life is beautiful and I have time.
Life is beautiful. I have so much bounty around me. My home is filled with love and laughter and MUSIC and the smell of granola in the oven. Outside, the noise of the world is muffled under a blanket of snow.
And I have time.
I have time.
My shoulders soften. I don’t have to rush. Just because other people are living in manufactured urgency, urging me to hurry - go - more - rush - push, I can choose not to. I don’t have to spend my life-minutes that way. I can opt out of the idea that there’s not enough time.
There is enough time. There are 15 awake hours every day. Hopefully, life is long and stretchy. And though life is long, it's also much too short to feel rushed all the time.
If I have time, I can lovingly choose a record. I can linger over this mug a little longer. I can color with these markers because the colors delight me. If I have time, everything I choose to do has value. There’s no wasting time, because experiencing time means I’m alive. My time is my own. My life is my own.
This is a different way to live, but it’s not easy.
~
Four years ago in March 2020, many people glimpsed a slower, quieter life. The pandemic brought fear, trauma, and tragedy. But it also cancelled our overwrought plans and inspired a culture of daily walks, baking bread, learning to knit. Before the pandemic, many felt like they didn’t have enough time…and then suddenly, there was this big undefined, unfilled stretch of time before us.
I honor those who had a very different experience of that period—those who worked in harrowing hospital conditions or took care of children while holding down suddenly-remote jobs. My experience of that time was at times scary, uncertain, lonely, magical, transformative, and also incredibly helpful.
The early pandemic years showed me what it’s like to have enough time.
Those years showed me the slower pace and quieter environments my body needs to thrive. I discovered that I actually do enjoy cooking, but only when I don’t feel rushed. After getting laid off and catching up on sleep, I learned that I wake up naturally after nine hours of sleep. And having free time emboldened me to start writing a newsletter and teaching workshops—things I wanted to try but never “had time” to experiment with.
That period also taught me that I don’t love holding my breath all day as I plow through a to-do list—nor do I love harsh office lights, the stress of airplane travel, or feeling like I have to put on a suit of armor to battle through each work day.
The last couple years I’ve been awkwardly emerging from that liminal, bizzare period of my adulthood where I actually had enough time.
I’ve been trying to revert to the way things were. I’ve been grabbing backwards, trying to be busy like I used to. Hoping to find fulfillment in fancy job titles and packed days. But none if it is working out, and I can’t pretend anymore. I’m different. And the world is different.
I thought we all decided we didn’t want to live like this, but here we are again…back to the haste and misery of trying to fit everything in. Is it just me? Aren't we all sick of living with such urgency?
Society has been very slow to acknowledge that we are different now. That we want change. That we need MUCH higher wages, shorter and flexible hours, universal childcare and eldercare, and policies that stop choking our planet and robbing people of their divine right to rest. The pace needs to slow WAY down. We need to focus on enjoying life and caring for each other, not rushing to get ahead.
~
I know what it's like to believe that life is beautiful and I have time. I’m not willing to settle for anything less.
I don’t know how to do it. It’s uncharted territory. But I think if we imagined we have plenty of time, we would start making different choices. Stop making work the center of our lives. Start realizing that frivolous hobbies and meandering debates about classic rock are what life is all about.
I’m starting to realize that “wasted” time is actually time well spent. If we want life to slow down, we must waste time doing silly things like listening to records. Maybe wasting time could become our practice—a way of unhooking from productivity and returning to the joy of our humanity.
A capitalist society is never going to tell us, “Let’s all slow down. Everyone should waste more time doing things that feel good.”
It’s up to us.
Actually, life is beautiful and we do have time.
Your turn:
What things are you doing when you tell yourself you’re wasting time? What are some worthy ways you can waste time today?
What did you learn from the early pandemic years that you have abandoned in order to get back to “normal”?
What’s possible if you believe that life is beautiful and you have enough time?
Note: I read the magical phrase, “Actually, life is beautiful and I have time,” in a newsletter by Nic Antoinette; she has an art print with those words but doesn’t know the artist. Please reply if you know. And “How do you want to spend your life-minutes?” is a lovely question I got from writer Alexandra Franzen.