building

I wake early and with the sunrise. Out here, in Africa, we are two hours ahead of the UK for a while yet, until the clocks go forward this month. Africa doesn’t bother about clock changing and it wonders me why anyone does. There must be a point to it. Perhaps there is only a limited amount of time in the world and it needs sharing. We lose an hour and another continent thousands of miles across the world finds it has gained one, over us, that is. What is achieved in that gained hour I wonder? Does somebody somewhere get a job done more thoroughly or is that hour just 60 minutes of boredom, time wasted, time not needed, time spent in waiting for something, anything to happen? And when we claim back that hour, around now, with Spring in our step, do we notice the gain of it, treasure it, make it really count, or is it just lost in sleep, a sleep cut short? This musing thinks me. I don’t need to know the facts around time gained, time lost, because this is not the way my mind works. I am more interested in the concept of time and what it means at the core of itself. Time gained? Who gains? Time lost? Who loses? All answers float in the stratosphere, high above factual explanations, beyond the reach of science or physics, free-flowing through the vast and unlimited space of an imagination. There is no such thing as time. Time is an illusion. We all have the same number of hours in a day. But what do we do with our no-such-thing, illusory and equally gifted gift of Time? Now that’s a question.

When I was mostly tapselteerie, way back when children were children, when I was taller than any of them and when, if I said NO, then NO it was, I never thought much about time as a concept. It was something the clock told me, tick, tock, tick, a hand at my back, a hurry up, a panic, a flurry of hours that allowed for no sit-downs, merciless in the tick and the tock of itself, selfish. Selfish time, stop a little, slow a bit, let me catch up? No chance of that my dear, you just need to shape up and move faster. It is like this for all in the muddle-frenzy of young life, building children, building a business, clambering up corporate ladders, learning new ways to fit in, diluting self for the benefit of the team and so on. From where I sit now, watching all this flurrying about me, I am glad it is done for me, no longer diluting self, no longer at the mercy of time, of business, softer round the edges, watching, smiling, calm. I was never calm in the olden days, although I did know people who managed the calm thing and it really irritated me that I couldn’t, me constantly on the boil, my guts in a right fankle, my legs never still. These people seemed in control of their time, allowing it to pass them by, yet still able to fire on all systems when required. Something to do with my faulty wiring, I told myself, and there was a damnit in that thought. However, looking back now through the rosy lens of hindsight, I smile as I recall the fankle, the self-flagellation, the waste of those minutes, those hours spent wishing I could be who I was not. Time wasted, or was it?

Self-reflection is no bad thing, as long as it is not indulged in and developed into a standstill. In my long journey through wasteland and over capricious and sometimes spiteful expanses of ocean, I did, and still do, need to trim my sails, to learn from life herself, to change this or that, to find a new way to look at an old thing. Learning is a lifetime’s work and I am still learning, still a student, an understanding that can really up my fed at times, and delight me at others. I still have my mind, my health, my precious life, time. None of us know how much of that we have, myself included, and it seems to me that this doesn’t really matter much. It’s who we are in the time we do have that remembers people, makes a dent in others lives. Did I waste time in my life? I did. Was I completely marvellous at filling my time to capacity and at all times? I was not. Did I share my time, gift my time every time it was needed? I did not. Am I deeply thankful for all the time spent, shared, gifted, wasted? Those hours of shared chatter, laughter, tears and silent companionship, those highs and lows, those moments spent staring through windows and wishing life was different, that something would happen to change everything……….am I thankful for all of that time? I am.

And now, for however much time is left, no matter the loss and gain of hours, I will keep time with Time. I will sleep some away, waste some, share some, sit alone and gaze through windows but this time without wishing for transformation, without regrets, analysis, criticism of self, all of that time wasting nonsense. Even through the rumpelstiltskin hours of a tossing night, even when I wish she would hurry up, slow down, stop completely for a while, even then, for Time is my friend and she is gift. So many have no time left at all.

I know I write often about relationships, but, let’s be honest here, they are fundamental to every step we humans make. In order to move forward in any area of our lives, we need to form them and feed them and acknowledge, within them, the parts we don’t resonate with. We must allow each other to be who we essentially are.

Unless I meet my doppelganger, (which could throw up no end of trouble if you think about it) I am always going to have to deal with the things in you that are not in me.

As are you.

I may be loud and laugh like a donkey. I may have an irritating habit or six. I may bring, and undoubtedly will, into this relationship, my baggage from my own past, my own hangups about being told what to do, for example, fixed, pigeon-holed. Or, it may be you who has spent a lifetime wanting your voice to be heard and then listened to and who is fed up with pigeons, and their holes.

When we embark on a new relationship, there is a kind of euphoria at first, if, that is, we click in a way that appears bathed in a glorious and magical light. Then, after a little time, this wonderful light begins to pale, it has to for the true person to show their face. We might not like this bit. Why is that? Because now we see beyond the mask, and we all wear them. There are ways we wish to be seen and ways we do not wish to be seen, but it is not possible to keep that mask on for long. Human nature is too strong for us, we are at its mercy.

What we are all seeking, is to be accepted as we are. There are probably thousands of books on this very subject. It’s called Agape love, as distinct from the type of love known as Eros, which is the one that comes bathed in light. It cannot last, Eros, although it’s dashed useful as a starting gun, unless it matures into Agape. The Greeks had many words to describe love, as do other languages. It’s only we English speakers who have the one word and it can fankle us up something rotten as we wander through our lives. For example, over time, love can grow weary of loving. This is something you might say to me. Love flickers like a candle in the winds of time, and can sometimes snuff right out. But not Agape love, I will reply, because this love doesnt seek domination nor control. It doesn’t ever want to make another feel small or scared or unsafe. This love protects and encourages, even if there is no obvious point upon which we both agree, especially then.

A mother’s love for a child can be this ‘warts and all’ type, although such total acceptance is often lacking between herself and the child’s father. And yet, didn’t they set out together to make a shared lifetime? Of course they did. So what is missing? If we can allow a child to grow into an unique being, how come we work so hard to de-unique a partner? I’m not saying we all do this, but I have found a common thread or two in the relationships I have watched and studied.

I am wondering if the starting point is outside or inside us. If it is outside, then it must follow that we are always at the mercy of the world and its complex entanglements, a world that expects us to do or be something and someone, in order to fit, to take our place in the pecking order. If it is inside us, then why can’t we change things? Perhaps it’s because we don’t really want to. Maybe we feel we have done all we can and why should we be the one to change? If you tell me I am too over-bearing or judgemental, too quick to put you down, and you only see, before you, a person in serious need of repair, then you are obviously not going to budge. And if I rather like whatever it is about me you don’t like, or I don’t even recognise these, so called, faults in myself, then nor am I.

If I could go back again to the early days of my adult life, not that I would want to, for a minute, I might have wished for more training on relationships and less on geography and latin. Emerging as a student with qualifications might indeed lead me into a certain area of work, presuming I could find any that is, but it doesn’t help me one bit in the art of relationship building, nor its ongoing maintenace. If I am one of those fortunate children who was loved with an Agape love, then I am even less well-equipped, in theory, for haven’t I been allowed to be myself in any and all situations? How on earth I am going to be able to ‘fit in’ to the shape you want me to fit into?

When I am working with school children, little ones, I can see who is confident in a goodly home love, and who isn’t, by the way the child behaves, shares, steps back, or doesn’t. I came from a large and competitive bundle of children, and I notice how we all want to be heard, our voices rising to cap the general white noise inside a crowded house, to lift above it. When I leave that nest, I take that need with me. At first, you might have found it rather cute, but over time, trust me, it could well become a pain in the aspidistra, and build on itself until it becomes a ‘bad’ point, something that needs fixing, although we may not ever agree on that one.

What I have learned for certain, over many long years of relationships, is that my strength is also my weakness, and my weakness is my strength. My excessive behaviour, is just creative energy lacking in direction, like a weed, which you may want to pull up and cast away, but which, in truth is just a wild flower in the wrong place.