Softness of Time

Photo by Anastasiia Mykytiuk

Passing of time. I want to look at it with a certain softness, with the understanding that we don’t always remember what really was and what really wasn’t. I want to think of time as a gift, as a certain way for each and one of us to grow better, wiser and more relaxed.

Usually, I stay away from contemplations about the past year around this time of calendar change or creating compilations of the days of the past year however this feels different.

This year feels more confronting year than I can ever imagine - jumping from the last lockdown into full-on volunteering for the Ukrainian people and people from Ukraine. Discovering parts of me I have not yet had a chance to be brave about. Discovering friendships that heal, partnerships that lift up, encounters that release and free, and moments that inspire to find different perspectives, ways of life and ways to life.

2022 was really full of a lot of first times. And I am very proud of it. A year dedicated to receiving and not chasing. A year spent with less travelling but so much more introspection and yet seeing so many people through different kinds of perspectives.

I have always been a curious one. I have always felt like I have to live my life in a haze of rush. I grew up reading a lot of books about war, elegy, and that liminal space where all human characters are being tested. There is this screenplay that takes its protagonists from the roaring 1920’s to the ruinous Spanish Civil War and Adolf Hitler's rise into power. And few of these lines have stayed with me for years:

“I have always believed our first duty is to ourselves… to live life to the full.

But I have also been haunted by another conviction...

that everything is preordained, lying in wait... and time is running out.

I seem to have charged through my life in a kind of panic. And looking back...

I feel I have achieved little of worth beyond our friendship”

I feel like perhaps I can slowly fold that feeling slowly away. The feeling of rushing, chasing and trying to be everywhere and everything. To be gracefully honest, I want to plant the gardens where my scars are finally mending. I want that softness of passing time to flower into bountifulness of wisdom, a gentle space and to foster creativity, kindness and love.