I don’t know how time is passing in your life during this time of pandemic and quarantines, at least for me these days are passing too fast and without realizing it we are about to start the second half of the year.
The speed with which the passing of time is felt, added to this “long weekend” (in the case of Chile), has made me think about how we are taking advantage of our time and each day.
I have met so many people for whom Sundays, just to give an example, are days to get up late, eat anything or directly “do nothing” (which usually refers to stay in bed watching TV or on the Internet), that I am struck by this habit. I’m not saying it’s bad or that leisure is something we should take out of our days or weeks, not at all. Rather what I am thinking is how people use the time resource to use it in a way that helps us achieve what we want, whether this is resting, distracting the mind by watching a movie, or using it to achieve our deepest and most transcendental longings.
A few days ago I was told: “enjoy the long weekend” and I felt like laughing, not because of the comment, but because of the interpretation I felt inside the message. Why would I enjoy using three days to stop moving forward in what is important to me? Maybe this idea of taking advantage or enjoying the time to do something else is something usual among those who dedicate themselves day by day to tasks they do not like, that instead of enjoying wear out their abilities and frustrate their motivation, but when you do what you are passionate about and move forward, even if it is only one step each day, then should you enjoy when you “get out of the way”?… personally I do not think that is what one would understand by enjoyment.
So, if you need days to stop doing those chores to which you dedicate yourself, perhaps the issue is not learning to enjoy, but making the decision to get out of the routines you have built so far and start installing new habits, tasks, jobs, activities, etc, that begin to feed your heart and mind with renewed energy.
None of us really knows how long we have to live, and this pandemic context has shown how fragile this can become. By the same token, doesn’t it seem too expensive a luxury to waste a day doing things that don’t have an impact on your desires, that don’t bring you a little closer to your goals or feed your own path of personal evolution, I don’t know how you see it, but to me it seems too expensive.
That is why I want to invite you to evaluate how you are using your time and your abilities, how you choose the actions you do every day, and please avoid those excuses that “one does not always do what one wants” or that “it is the life that touched me and you do not understand”, because maybe that can justify you for a moment, but believe me that the day will come when you have lost so much time that the emptiness inside you will not let you sleep peacefully.
What are the things that are really important to you? what do you want and what do you need? how much do you do every day to be closer to those goals? you do not have to change everything for tomorrow, but maybe it is good to take a step every day, improve in some aspect, get a small victory, maybe with a personal habit, maybe with something you want to learn, or a pending project, a conversation with someone significant in your life, I do not know, but stop wasting time and days because they do not return, they are not bought, they are simply behind and we have already lost enough to continue losing and at will.
I wish from my heart that you can win every day, that there is no lost moment because you have learned to choose, freely and consciously in what to use your time, that when you get distracted it is consciously, that when you play you do it to get a moment of oxygen, some new idea or whatever you are looking for, but that you start to get out of the river that takes you where it wants, to be deliberative, that is to say, you begin to choose each action with a sense of purpose, and thus to conquer each day, each week, each month and each year and you will see how, without realizing it, you will not only be closer to what before were simply longings, but you will be sitting in the place you once dreamed of, while others continue to explain themselves and you sit at the table of your satisfactions.