What time is it? 🌖
I don't know about you,
but switching to Daylight Savings time eaaarly in March
here in Year Three of Lockdown(ish)
has me feeling a bit disoriented.
via GIPHY
I wonder if you, too, are having a peculiar experience of time?
For me, and lots of my friends and clients,
the events of 2020 and 2021 are all enmeshed,
and whole swaths of time have evaporated.
My kids virtually schooled for almost a year and a half,
but I scarcely remember it, and how difficult it was.
When I try to figure out when some event of the past couple years happened -
that trip, or that conversation -
I have to count, and count again, to know how long ago it was.
I count and count again, and cannot believe,
that it was not even one year ago that I received my first COVID vaccine.
I do remember standing in line for 2 hours at a community clinic to get my shot,
but I don't really remember the 15 months of anxiousness that preceded it.
Months where my country's maniacal president held the whole world hostage,
where there was no toilet paper available for purchase,
where we attended BLM protests socially-distanced and masked,
hoping that the maniacal president would not send tear gas and rubber bullets.
Can you EVEN REMEMBER all that?
I am sorry to re-hash it.
But if you wondered why you're so weary,
why it's hard to get traction with your new project,
why you have those extra pounds, or those chronic pains?
I think it is because we have been through a lot.
So much, we cannot even fathom it.
*
In my house, whenever someone asks “What time is it?”
invariably they are answered:
SHOWTIME.
Which I love.
I always take it as a declaration of freedom from the press of the clock and calendar,
and as a reminder that really,
What Time It Is
is always NOW.
Now is the bridge between past and future,
the place where we reckon with What Happened,
and orient toward What's Next.
My friend:
if your Now feels heavy
(mine sure does)
perhaps it's because there's a LOT to reckon with.
Let's give ourselves grace and space to Just Be Here,
with as much healing ease, as much loving sweetness,
as we can conjure.
love,
Natalie