What Did You Mean to Write?

Time has no idea that there is a calendar... or a five-day work week... or school semesters... or even 24 hours in a day.

Time doesn't recognize the shortest day of the year (December 21), which is actually also the longest night of the year (of which Time cares not a whit.)

Time doesn't recognize our new Year's Resolutions, our birthday wishes, our current regrets about past opportunities.

Time exists within the moment.

Yes, that moment when you read the previous sentence... and now the moment when you are reading this.

That is where time exists. Within each. individual. moment. That. liminal. space. It exists once and is then gone forever. never to exists again, unable to be replicated exactly.

Gone.

Cheerful- isn't it? It could be cheerful. It could be a mercy.

Think of the many moments you are relieved not to relive. Those small disappointments like the breakup with your first love. Loss of a treasured gift. Failure of a class. Laughter from your peers when you fubbed the winning point. Horrid haircut.

Those bigger disappointments like the betrayal of a spouse. Devastating medical diagnosis. Loss of a parent. Eviction from your home.

We only relieve those losses, those hard moments, when our memory pokes at them like a tongue to a sore tooth- prodding to see if the pain is still as vivid as we remembered then wincing when we find that it is.

Correct your future memory now.

This time last year you were thinking about this current year, and all the bright promise it held. Those open and airy days just waiting for you to make your mark on them. Waiting for the calendar to be filled with 'would-be-nice' and 'if-I-can' and 'by-this-date' and 'block-this-out' written in teeny letters or entered into an app.

Audacious goals about exercise, goal weights, new vistas to explore, outings and evenings, and for writers: stories/poems/memoirs/books/posts to make.

Did you achieve them all? Did you make your goals and hit your marks? Did you bring to fruition all of the ideas and plots, rhythms and rhymes that jostled your thoughts and brought you brimming with purpose into this unrecognized construct that we call the New Year?

I surely didn't.

I'm not going to allow myself to be upset about that. The goals and plans that I made regarding my writing were based on something unralistic. They were based on a manmade construct and not a universal reality. They were based on the supposition that the turn of a calendar page changes everything... changes anything.

It changes nothing. Not. A. Thing.

The calendar is man's attempt to tame Time. To capture and own a moment. To assign import over one sliver of existence and weigh success by our mastery of it. And that is folly. Foolishness. Vanity. Pride.

The mastery of Time is the recognition of the Moment. The appreciation of the Present. The awareness of where you are in the Now.

Did you feel it, just now? Did you feel that lightening as you read those words? (I'll wait here, please read them again slowly if needed to let them resonate.)

Here. Now. This moment. What did you mean to do within the spaces we designated 2024? What did you mean to write? Using the terms we have agreed on: You still have Time.

There are one dozen days left in this abstract calendar. Twelve days left to complete (or begin) that thing you were going to do, that post you were going to make, that letter you were going to write, that call you were going to make, that journal entry/card/note/thank you you meant to send.

Tell me, friend, what were you going to write?

Leave a comment as a start, write it down. Then let that idea put into words simmer and pop within your mind, season it with dreams and care, allow it to percolate, air it gently, and release it within the proper moment to allow it to shine.

You still have Time.