There is no time to waste time
2020 has been the most challenging year of our generation so far; the ones who have the fortune to reach out this year have witnesses or been protagonists of many experiences that we never thought could happen in this era. It is undeniable that this pandemic has been affecting us in many ways, maybe by losing someone we loved because of Covid-19 or by the collateral damage caused by this pandemic.
Maybe many of us don’t yet have the virus, but we have been struggling with the pandemic’s collateral damage. Isolation and the lockdown have been pushing our limits to levels that sometimes feel unbearable. In this 2020 we have been bombed with statistics about the number of deaths, increasing depression rates, domestic violence incidents, and so on, but there is a particular figure that caught my attention, that is, divorce and break-up numbers.
In an interesting article from the BBC, psychotherapists like Noel Bell, a London-based specialist in personal growth, argue that the pandemic is also prompting more existential re-evaluations of what, and whom, people want in their lives. “The pressures of the pandemic have reminded us all that life might be short, and we are tasked to assess how, and with whom, we are spending our precious time.”
Although this kind of existential re-valuations needs to be at least part of our life, we rarely think about our mortality and how fragile is our body; also now more than ever, we rarely make a stop in our busy social life (real or virtual) to think about ourselves, how we are spending our time, if we fell fulfill, and last but not least, if we are really connected to the people, places or things around us.
This pandemic represents a forced stop in our busy modern lifestyle full of activities, social encounters, stimulations, and top-10 routines to be successful, wealthy o whatever we could reach out in the less time possible. Our hectic life has now been forced to slow down, and in the process, we might have the time to live our lives in a rhythm that allowed us to see the things we were incapable of before because we were in denial or too busy to be aware.
Sometimes, we spend our time trying to be someone we are not and with people we are not fully connected to. We might live in this way for many weeks, years, even decades. If we don’t do the real job of questioning or evaluating our life decisions, neither giving value to our time and by default to ourselves; we could be missing the opportunity to live a fulfilling life connected to our true self. This could linger on until one particular moment, that I like to call a wake-up call (in this case, a global crisis like the pandemic), brings us all these questions in the form of existential crisis, an emptiness in our lives, a feeling of neglect or being out of place. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but using the words once told by a friend to sum the way I am trying to express: “It didn’t feel like home!”.
We constantly put ourselves aside to fit. We get comfortable with the idea of simply existing, just functioning and living a plain life because it is safer. Quite often we seek external validation and a feeling of belonging. In order to achieve that we sacrifice ourselves and our necessities on behalf of other people’s needs.
It is time to reconsider our priorities; it is time to put ourselves first on the list because this pandemic shows us that there is no time to waste time. We need to find a balance between feeling fulfilled with ourselves and connected to someone or something. To do that we need to be open and vulnerable, this is petrifying (I know), but it is worthy. At the moment we begin to live on behalf of ourselves and recognize our desires, we can then set limits that allow us safeguard our well-being and make every minute count.
We do not need to fit in every place, is not worthy. If the price for belonging is to lose and to sacrifice ourselves, then I don’t want to pay it. The world is large enough for all of us and life might be too short to waste our precious time trying to be someone we are not and with people we are not fully connected to. It is time to present our imperfect and true selves to the world, and perhaps we could find a place for ourselves.
“I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into its expanse to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.” Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre.
Thank you @david.lethei for the review and suggestions!
