203 Comments

Time has occupied so much of my thoughts lately. At 71, my entire being is fully aware, charged really, with the reality of being in the 'sacred final chapter' of life. It's humbling because the physical body reminds me daily, in aches and pains and, of course, the damn bathroom mirror, that time has shortened. Yet, there's so much life yet offers me! It's energizing and I'm engaged, enthused and determined to finish with gratitude, love and adventure.

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MaryBeth, I wonder if the gift of age, I am 78, helps us to appreciate the small breezes of grace that touch us in the course of a day and empower or awaken us to be a breeze of presence for someone else. May we always be “just in time” to be Grateful for the gift of LIFE!

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I couldn't possibly say it any better, Mary. So I won't try. Those "small breezes of grace" are what I also treasure most.

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The “breeze of presence” is such an intriguing prompt. Is it our own presence for which we seek a subtle sign? Or is it another’s? A known or unknown person?

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Love your questions Jo. I wonder if when we truly encounter another, is that exchange of actual presence with another person or another part of creation what the “breeze of presence” actually is? Is that when our own presence encounters another presence and expands, breathes more deeply in recognition of life …

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I have just turned 70. Not sure how I got here so quickly! I have named this time “My decade of once in a lifetime opportunities”. and plan to say yes. That may create some problems and difficulties but what do I have to lose at this time in my life? If nothing else, I will have awesome tales to tell!

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for my 75th birthday -- and after 3 years in pandemic isolation -- I took myself to Biarritz France for a writer's workshop, and on to Normandie to fend for myself outside a structure. It wasn't easy but it was glorious. A month after getting back to San Francisco, there were some last minute openings with Padraig at Omega. I seized the opportunity. It was glorious. Also I got Covid there. Then, fortunately, I got better. Then, other things happened. I want to challenge myself to move outside the what ifs and the worries to live as fully as possible this last bit. I love your "My decade of once in a lifetime opportunities". Find them; seize them!

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Gayle, you are my role model! It is so easy to get into your own head and self sabotage instead of just doing it, living it, loving it and at times, hating it. Thanks for the inspiration!

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there's this little you tube video series called Beneath the Surface, where this 50-something year old couple Josh and his wife (sorry I don't remember her name) who live in Portland, and lived in California before that, and whose two sons are grown up, decide to upend their beautiful, stable, peaceful, and stagnant existence to move to Europe. They're both originally from Argentina so they speak fluent Spanish (of course) and fluent English, and decided they'll explore Europe for a year before deciding where to settle. There's a lot of self-reflection and good info about the challenges (and also the rewards) of such an endeavor. I take it (and all wonderful exploration -- mental and physical -- as inspiration. Fifty is different than 70 but that doesn't mean 70 means done. Check it out anyway, and let me know if you know any other videos of "elders" seizing the moments of their lives.

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Hi Gayle! It was great being at Omega last fall (unfortunate about the COVID and glad you got better!). Thank you for describing your glorious adventure in France. You're inspiring, thank you. Good to see you here!

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I'm 71 too MaryBeth, and you've described so perfectly how I feel, fully charged, aware, in some ways more alive than I've ever been, perhaps because I have the time to live it more fully. And more and more I feel "out of time," not that it's running out, but that time is just an illusion I don't believe in any more. So many of the comments below allude to this freeing sense of time. A fascinating subject. Love Eckhardt too.

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me too. at 75, what you said here, Deborah. exactly. thank you for writing. I haven't read Meister Eckhardt yet. He goes on the list now.

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Isn't it wonderful knowing that so many of us are enjoying the pleasures of being in our seventies? Something for the young to look forward to. Every stage of life has its gifts.

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Thanks for blazing the way with joy for those of us following! I know I appreciate aging "like fine wine!"

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Enthusiasm for life is wonderful!

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Well said. I’m there with you.

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Hi MaryBeth: Came on this today Oct. 22nd, 2023. Through reading the tread on Padraig’s Sunday Substack. I am in your age zone, 72, and so aware of these days, each one, closer to the date of my death. This need to shout out how I can find grace in each day especially in the seemingly graceless moments. And how the death of dear beloveds is now not an exception. How they remind me to stay awake and begin again the story of my life each day. Thank you for your comment!

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Thinking of the phrase “just in time.” As in: I stopped just in time, I looked up just in time, I picked up the phone just in time. “Just in time” to: Avoid an accident; see a hummingbird at the feeder; to be there when a friend called. Not always a race with time, but a meshing of two toothed gears, suddenly engaging in the present moment.

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I've been present just in to see : Lightning flashes, jets leaving trails ( does NOBODY look at jets anymore ? ) Seagulls blown off - course to the middle US & possibly Canada, full moons peeking out from cloud cover. I realize that such moments can only live again in memory.

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I look at jets! And I look at the clouds and the birds flying too! : )

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I still wonder where the people onboard are going, where they've been, whether they were traveling on business, to see loved ones, things like that.

It's part of our heritage to look up, & perhaps to aspire.

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So do I! I especially love contrails at sunset in an otherwise clear sky; white pelicans floating across the dark blue with slow motion wing beats; the voluminous thunderheads in early summer, multicolored and full of constant lightning...so much beauty, and all we have to do is look up.

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I even saw a drone at least twice. Those are an item not normally seen.

Seriously, I've watched a lot of lunar AND solar eclipses & at least one meteor shower that was a very unusual experience, pre - internet.

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It's interesting that those serendipitous moments only occur when you stop trying to make Good Things happen and just follow the thread where it wants to take you.

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That "meshing of two toothed gears" feels good when it happens!

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Yes. That meshing of time and place in our awareness.

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Study of light

A scientist from Denmark

has slowed

light

to the speed

of a bicycle.

Here,

light remains

untamed

rushing away from us

in all directions.

Look at the stars

they have broken free

from time.

We are learning to fly

at the speed of a bicycle –

our headlights hollow out

pale tunnels

through the night.

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Love this! Thank you Fionnaigh.

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I love the way time collapses and expands as I look back over the growing number of minutes, hours and decades and try, just for a moment, to be only here. Only now.

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Sometimes it's like minutes feel like hours or perhaps DAYS. Other times hours seem like minutes. The tedious hours spent in REALLY BORING college classes, overly long boring church sermons, FUNERALS are some of the worst offenders for " minutes feel like hours ", while enjoyable times seem like shooting stars.

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Beautifully put.

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I struggle to make sense of time. "Time blindness" is a term that gets used to describe the struggle that some neurodivergent people have with time. I don't have any sense of how much time has passed while I'm doing an activity. That might be nice if it happened occasionally when doing something meaningful... but it can be quite impairing when it happens with things that could be considered time wasting, or when trying to function in a world run to a schedule. I find it very hard to estimate how long something will take. I'm constantly late, even for things that are very important to me (meeting a friend I haven't seen for months, or an appointment with an expensive specialist) because I don't realise how long it will take me to get ready, or to travel. And then I feel terrible about making the same mistake yet again! I heard someone talk about experiencing time as "now" and "not now" and I relate to that. It's hard for me to figure out exactly when things happened in the past, or in what order.

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I've thought a lot about time as something that is a sense. Neurologists have proposed that we have more that five "primary" senses and there's good evidence that we do have many more physiological sense receptors than what is conventionally thought. Sense of time (or chronoception, to make it sound scientific) is suggested as a sense though there has been no receptor identified for it, as far as I know. Regardless, you make a good case for seeing time as a sense. And, surely, many of us have experience of time crawling, flying, of time being deeply rich and painfully shallow. I've not thought of time sense as something subject to neurodivergence before. So that's something new for me to consider and i than-you. The other thing i think about is the notion of "flow" as theorized by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi which he describes as that state of concentration and complete absorption that we often experience when we are caught up in a task (whether that's someone engaged in artistic creating, someone immersed in reading, and so on). When in such a state, we lose the sense of many things (time, hunger, physical exhaustion, and so on). I can appreciate how "time blindness" can be a huge struggle for some people. Though I wonder if the negative consequences aren't, in fact, a function of the social organization of time that we create and regulate and police.

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That's really interesting. I have totally aphantasia, so I don't have any senses in my imagination. I can't visualise, or hear a song in my mind. I wonder if it's linked at all to time being "sensed"? More research needed There's another concept called monotropism that seems potentially connected to what you're talking about with flow. It's much harder for some of us to shift focus. I definitely experience hyperfocus, when I don't notice other things either (bodily cues, people talking to me...) but I don't really have a sense of time at any point, even if I'm not hyperfocussed on something. So you're last sentence sounds a bit like the social model of disability, which is a helpful framing I think.

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I only learned of aphantasia earlier this year. It immediately made me realize how much we take certain cognitive abilities for granted. And it makes me appreciate more deeply the contemporary (and relatively new) discourse of neurodivergence. This also reminds me of synaesthesia which has been linked to memory and apparent superpowers of recall. But also with disability. And you've made me wonder about how our sense(s) of time factors into it all. More research needed, indeed. And, yes, I suppose i was referring to the social model of disability. In my education and social movement work these past forty years, it's long been a given for me that "disability" is a socially constructed naming - one that suits the regimes of our socio-economic world over and above the unique needs of individuals and communities.

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Yes I hate the terms disability and special needs. I believe we are all simply people who need varying degrees of assistance at different times of our lives and that self determination is the most essential part of that equation and even non verbal people must be supported in their own goals for self determination such as my own son. This not only should be done. It has been done. But I fall back on the constructs at times because my definition can be a euphemism for the extraordinary challenges some people endure. And while diagnoses can be separating and isolating they are also life saving. Once my children had diagnoses we had a wealth of both medical and educational resources to draw upon. It's complex and that's why continued conversations on both terminology and individual need are vital. There are no perfect terms or perfect solutions.

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I agree. That humans require assistance to live well and with dignity is more true than not. Human infants require more support (and for longer) than any other mammal. So we begin life with that support as a given. And, of course, many of us need a lot of support towards the end of our lives though, sadly, our societies do not treat that with the same priority we grant our children. COVID has exposed here in Canada (and i expect in the US as well) serious flaws in the long-term care (institutional and otherwise) of seniors. And, that through our life (and of course depending on the conditions with which we are born) we need the care of others is almost a certainty for every last one of us. And yet, the dominant story of our cultures is one of individual self-sufficiency and if we can't meet that expectation we are considered lesser. It's absurd, untrue, and even cruel. I'm a big fan of diagnostic science and know very well what you say about the positive value of getting a diagnosis. I'd suggest that it's not the diagnosis that is "separating and isolating" (for isn't that simply what the science is telling us?) but rather it's the social stigma we assign to various diagnoses - and that ain't science. It's good ole' human flaws. I have learned from the work of Arthur Frank how to see all this all quite radically (i.e. seeing down to the roots of the matter). Frank is a sociologist of "illness narrative" and his work is simply awesome. I read his book "The Renewal of Generosity: Illness, Medicine, and How to Live" over ten years ago and immediately made it an assigned reading for my grad students in subsequent years. It is a bit on the academic side but is very eloquent and damned moving at times. It's one of the few academic texts that has made me weep. And his point is actually a simple one: that humans require care.

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It is so good to hear your words Chris because they all ring bells for me in my experience and thinking. I will seek out that book and report back to you!

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I love your expanded discussion on sense of time. Sense of time is different for everyone but I do find that helping our son to create a shape to his day (and I like this word better than structure) helps him make sense of time. I and those around him try to assist as best we can because this is no perfect art, just like it's far from perfect for those who don't experience this as acutely.....it certainly is fascinating to contemplate each our own relationship with time!

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It is so interesting to read about your relationship to time. My son has a diagnosis of Koolen deVries and he has always had challenges around expressive language, but has gradually been able to speak in comprehensible full sentences, but verb tense still eludes him. Then I noticed verb tense is connected with his struggle with not only to tell time on a clock, but also to sense time. When he has memories it is as though they are now. This also appears to intensify feelings around loss of loved ones because time doesn't appear to pass for him. He can remember what our family ate at a special meal from years ago. He has no idea when to get ready for anything because he is confused about how to feel time. He has a job and is very capable to getting ready for it and all the other things accompanying that, but needs prompts to get started, when to transition, etc...There are many helpful prompts out there, but he keeps teaching me how the challenge is bigger than that.

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“Time blindness” liking that terminology. I have thought of periods of time like being on a boat in mid-ocean with horizon all around, and being in need of landmarks to mark time’s passing.

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Thank you for sharing this! I hadn't heard the term, "time blindness."

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I find myself thinking about something that is obvious, that our understanding of time changes so very much as we get older. Young folks seek to fill time, and then there are the stages when everything seems to be in preparation for the next step, when time is filled with anticipation.

And then I hit my 60's. And a surgery and a diagnosis. Ordinary time looks more extraordinary indeed. The next phase may well not be so good, so I'm relishing the Now, the Here. This is the gift of getting older, the desire to genuinely live in the moment.

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Been thinking similar thoughts recently. I spent most of my young years anticipating. To be ready--in case. Took me decades to realize how much we miss while always waiting for something to happen. Learning to just be was very difficult. Today, I see how fast time flies, how opportunities are fleeting, and how rich the moment is.

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Just did a 150 mile biking trail through the Allegheny forests of Maryland and Pennsylvania. I did it with my son (51). I am 80 yet pedaled with him, 20 yards behind yet together. Each day was in yet outside of time. The pedaling reduced our distances....on trail and between us.

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Biking the River Trail

Night train to Cumberland,

watching landscapes glide by.

till we arrive with the sun,

mount our bikes and

head down to the trail.

My son, twenty yards ahead

I twenty behind, asking him

to lead as I did with my father.

Both of us pumping hard

in and out of time,

closing the distances.

Sunlight breaking through lush greens,

wide river flowing below;

a chipmunk darts across the tail,

a robin turns these woods to song.

Bikers without names pass by

nodding to our bikes and eyes.

Tunneling darkness through to light

we pedal steady over bridges

too high to look down, my heart

beating hard at the rescue side.

Ten miles and we rest

sweat soaking through our shirts,

we lean our smiling bikes on trees,

take our easy breath on benches.

Climbing and coasting

mostly steady pedaling in sync,

we go on without thinking

just doing what’s essential.

Four days of cycling,

each a cycle of its own.  

"And the wheels…go round and round..."

marrying us to the road we're on.

 Then into the city traffic as

walkers and bikers pass blankly.

Father and son, son and father,

we have arrived together, we have

made the trail our own.

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Oh, wow! This sounds wonderful!

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My son says time flies! You’re only 10, I reply. Time should be maple syrup. His summers should stretch like bubblegum on the bottom of a shoe. Not like time lapse photography

ofawatermelongrowingonavine.

Often, I'm at war with time. Want to savor the slow sweet undercurrents, but find myself surface-high, in a float, sopping wet and looking at my phone.

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Time is both the chisel that reveals

and the sediment that conceals

the pulsating artefact, a sedimentary heart.

~

The pull of time is like the moon's leash on the sea -- never slack.

Morning comes too soon, or not soon enough.

Though we soar like fluid thunder,

Or crawl on dusty ground,

Dawn's inarticulate song breaks body and soul

Upon her shore.

~

Sometimes, I wish humanity would vanish from the face of the earth

so that nature could have all the time in the world to herself again.

~

Just a few poems that came to mind with this pondering on mysticism, poetry, time and time's demands. Thank you for reading!

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“the moon’s leash on the sea.” Wow! Thank you Anna.

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I’d like to write a nice contemplation on time this morning, but I don’t really have time. Getting ready to have the clan out to our cabin by a lake today where we’ll all be spending time together, telling stories, making memories, soothing crying babies, looking at the old photo albums, laughing, loving each other. Time will expand and I will hold it as long as possible.

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I am gently reminded of this post to something we in our family call ‘Irish time’ -meaning not being bound by watches and deadlines when meeting, talking, engaging and laughing with friends and neighbors. Time stops for this as people come first and our ‘eternal moment’ with them.

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Your family's "Irish Time" is beautiful!

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‘I’m trying to simply notice what time is doing in me throughout the day: demanding, consoling, bullying, cajoling, nurturing, deceiving, delivering. By noticing it, I’m trying to discover tiny experiences where I can take a small step away from time, even for a breath, so that I can see it before stepping back into it.’

What a practice for daily living

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It is Pentecost Sunday, but this morning I found myself contemplating Ordinary time-- the liturgical season of green--the ordinary holy, and the long time we count, until Advent, simply waiting for something extraordinary, while overlooking much of what holy in our ordinary days. So the timing of this newsletter seems potent with meaning, connecting my own contemplative practices to something much larger, broader: how the writing of poetry is also the living of it and the ways we wait for something extraordinary, when ordinary presence seems too quiet, too small. It is in these very moments when everything begins to change.

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For most of my life I have felt as if I live everywhere but the present.

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I've been thinking about "Ode to my Homegirls" since listening to it last week. Thank you for sharing that one (and all of them), Pádraig!

I find "rushing energy" the worst. I try to avoid it by doing one thing at a time, which makes time feel less urgent. In rushed moments, I also tell myself: "You are the master of time." I can't recall where I got that, but it somehow works magic in slowing things down. It's even helped me get to places "on time" when doing so appeared impossible.

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I’m old and Time greets me each early morning to remind me “ Sing your song. It won’t be long”

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