Tuesday, May 01, 2012

fields of dreams



Time. The most valuable resource. I’d do a crazy busy schedule any day just to have what’s coming – a feeling of time. And space, so that when I look out, I see more than just what’s in front of my nose. It’s hard to look beyond your living room when you haven’t the time to venture further.



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our farmer, working the fields down the road

Today was harried, tomorrow will be crazed, then will come a few days of normal and after that – time.

How is it that we, with our work ethic and endless growth obsession, never admit to how valuable, desirable, luxurious it is to have merely time? And I don’t mean time to do nothing (though if that’s your goal at the end of the day, then why not?). But time to be yourself in charge of the next hour and the one after? 



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fields of growth, fields of future dreams

The neighbor across the road plants trees. Rows and rows of them. For your grandchildren, right? Ed teases him. (Rows of trees in fields of dandelions. To see him tend those trees is to know what it is to be content.)


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Success, as measured by time. Pour resources into banking time.

Before it runs out on you.

5 comments:

  1. When we're busy, and we don't feel we have time, then we really are banking success. Work ethics and busy schedules keep us distracted from the idle time during which, otherwise, we could dwell on our troubles.

    Busy is good!

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  2. I have come - slowly - to love the leisure of time that is my own. To do or not, whatever is my fancy for the moment, which really is a way of living in the moment. Thank you for your lovely reminder (in this busy crazy week that I too am having but it's over soon).

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  3. Irene -- if you have time, you can, if you want, fill it and be quite busy. By choice.
    Diane -- yes, leisure is good. To be valued. Admired. It's a luxury in our world, but people crave all kinds of luxuries and boats and cars and mansions. Why not simply time? A lottery, where the big prize is -- time.

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  4. Then I must have won The Lottery, Nina. The Time Lottery. Retirement. I keep saying, probably ad nauseum, that it's the best part of my life. But I think that without all the years, for me that would be 46 years, of slugging away at a 9-to-5 job, and not one that is especially rewarding but just a job that helps to pay the rent, then having this time in retirement might not seem so special and welcomed. But I did work all those years, with very little time off, with very few actual vacations, with very little spare money to do anything other than just putz around the house, with the exception of the years we scrimped very hard and saved for our trips overseas to England. All the rest of our time has been filled with work, until now for me. And being able to wake up in the morning and stop and think, "what do I want to do today?" is the most luxurious thing in all the world.

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  5. i've recently gained some time to myself, but before a few weeks ago, i used to daydream about it. and anyone i met or knew, it seems, i'd think about the free time i imagined they must have and how they might spend it (in ways i would want to spend it if i had it).

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