Tag: Time

I am here

contemplation

Although I do enjoy spending time online, when I spend far too much time it makes me feel numb. I don’t know what it is, maybe information overload, but there is something desensitizing about the Internet. Of course there are texts, articles and talks that enrich, entertain or provoke us in some manner, where their content stays and grows with us for weeks. However, while reading them it’s really easy to click on those other links that just take up time. I notice that the more I stay online, the more my body and my spirit suffers and I suspect that it’s partially because of this ‘extra’ time of mine that I allow the Internet to rob me of… the time that makes me more detached than it makes me feel connected.

Someone told me once that a good start for regaining balance is to say to yourself ‘I am here’. I am here [breathe]. I am here [look around]. I am here [notice how you feel]. I am here [notice your body]. I am here… Who am I? Where am I going? What have I stopped doing? What am I looking for?

‘I am here’ is for many a start of a prayer or meditation. It allows us to take stock of our physical and metaphysical reality. It brings us back to our homes and personal realities that the Internet so eagerly detaches us from.

I am here, writing these words for you while I contemplate the future of this blog, of its value to you, to me and to my family. Part of me feels that the “I am” in “I am here” wouldn’t be me without writing and photographing… but I also wonder who I would be or become if the time that I spend on writing and documenting life would be spent on other things? I guess that my house would be cleaner… or maybe it wouldn’t.

The gift of the mountains

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“The greatest gift of life on the mountain is time. Time to think or not think, read or not read, scribble or not scribble — to sleep and cook and walk in the woods, to sit and stare at the shapes of the hills.”
― Philip Connors

There was no Internet where I was last week but a truly wonderful land to explore. A few photos above. Welcome back friends!

Against all odds

Walk in snow

I used to bend my time. I was able to dedicate extra hours, days, weekends to various projects and ambitions and I was good at it. I was good at being dedicated, going the extra mile and generating motivation to do things. When you have love for learning, motivation is easy. It is just there. And you draw from it. Happily. Freely. Endlessly. So you think. Until you become a parent. When a child appears in your life, you realise that there is very little time to bend… no time to waste… hardly any time to flex. It is the time when despite having loads of motivation to engage with things, you realise that motivation on its own will not take you far. That you need a change…in attitude…in lifestyle… in your entire life approach maybe too… you just need to change… change.

Last year I embarked on a very important professional long-term project. This project is now calling for my attention, wants my commitment and wants the hours to be put in. This is not going to happen in the evening when my son falls asleep…It wants more of my time and so it seems to me that it’s only the early start that can do it…. the two hours before the baby wakes up… and I need to do it as otherwise I’ll fail… and everything that I’ve been working for over the last six years will be lost… and simply I cannot allow this to happen. I never needed as much discipline in my life as I need now… I never needed as much planning and I never needed to be so organised… and my dear friends this is painful because I’ve been always valuing freedom and flexibility and space… and now I need to change… and put some limits and barriers on that space and time that I possess as otherwise I would need to give up what I started… give up something very precious… an opportunity to grow… and that’s just not in my character.

So I’ve got a challenge before me that requires discipline and strong will… will that I need to develop and the discipline that I need to master. They will allow me to confront the challenge and find solutions to my busy days. I am starting from a new position… from a position that is still new, continuously changing and always demanding… that of a very tired but filled with love mum. It’s difficult, it’s exhausting sometimes but I believe that what I’m doing will lead to growth. Of myself, of my family and of others. And that’s what matters, doesn’t it? That we grow. Spiritually. Mentally. Intellectually. Truly. Grow.

“A characteristic of human nature – perhaps the one that makes us most human – is our capacity to do the unnatural, to transcend and hence transform our own nature.” M. Scott Peck

Thank you Mary Slow for your inspiring words. You motivated me to write this post. Check out Mary Slow’s wonderful and thought-provoking blog.