A Life Unhacked: Living our lives by a ‘top 10 list of easy, life hacks’ is making us miserable and the solution is to have a cup of tea with Time
Time. Tap. Tap. Tap.
When we experience the passing of time it often feels like a broken faucet, incessantly dripping, one drop at a time, down the drain. The only evidence of its existence is the rust stain that accumulates around the edges of the catch.
Drip, drip, drip, drop. Tick tock, tick tock.
Tick tock. Time is money.
Tick tock. Lost track of time.
Tick tock. Don’t waste your time.
Time is invisible and ethereal and yet, we feel it softly, brush our cheek, as it passes by, but when we turn towards it and try to grasp at it, it evaporates into ether, leaving a faint vapor trail behind. Time surrounds us, like a fog, and envelops us in its wispy tendrils. The evidence of time’s passing is undeniable as moisture, from time’s mist, collects and accumulates on our skin, slowly seeping into our pores. We feel it accelerate, like a light drizzle turning into rain, as it tap, tap, tap, taps us on top of our heads, then drip, drip, drip, dripping through us to soak deep into our bodies until, finally, it collects and settles, hardening in the pit of our stomachs. Time has become an invisible weight, heavy, like granite, yet viscous and squishy, coagulating inside. We feel the pressure, painfully, in our solar plexus as it agitates to anxiously remind us that ‘time waits for no one’.
That painful lump we feel is anxiety generated by the scrolling ‘to-do’ list that we always carry in our minds, hopeful to catch a moment of time so we can cross one more thing off the list. It is pointless and futile, since time quickly replaces one ‘to-do’ with another and so we beg and plead with time.
Slow down, so I can catch my breath.
Stop, so I can get some sleep.
Give me more time, I just need to do one more thing.
Time slips through our fingers when we try to grasp it and hold it in our hands. Time is indifferent to our pain and continues to pass us by.
How does something so ethereal and seemingly weightless become so heavy and oppressive? What do we do to remove this invisible loadstone weighing us down in the center of our body?
We are exhausted and we know we must do something about this heaviness, so we try to control it or mold it into something we can command. We try to reason with it. We look for shortcuts or “life hacks” that will ease our suffering and remove our fear and anxiety about what little time we have. We hack our way through articles and blogs offering advise about “managing time” “using time effectively” “carving out time for focus” all of which are supposed to lead us to “living our best lives”. Somewhere, in the middle of the hacked out forest, we become convinced that the right life hack is all we need to conquer time. Maybe if we control how we “spend time” that will ease the load. But then time passes, reminding us that, that burdensome mass still exists. Only now, it has become inflamed, burning us from within and so we obsessively search for a new life hack that will finally provide a reprieve from the fiery pressure building up inside.
We are consumed by hack culture, fed to us by bloggers, journalists, life coaches, psychologists, and TEDTalks. These life hacking ‘experts’, well-meaning though they may be, have provided endless advice on how we need to change our lives by learning how to manage and control time. They write articles of bulleted advise on how “20 Amazing life hacks for 2020” will help us control the seconds, minutes and hours of our lives. They have YouTube channels and blogs devoted to sharing how their latest list of “100 incredible life hacks that will make life so much easier”, but only if we follow their advice can we “live our best lives”. These ‘experts’ assert that we must not be living our best lives if we are unhappy or dissatisfied because life hacking requires there to be a ‘best’ way and ‘worse’ way to live. Furthermore, they, as life hacking ‘experts’, possess the singular eminence to define how a ‘good life’ should be lived. We, mere mortals and life livers, begin to internalize the message that when life isn’t ‘best’ then it’s our fault because we are broken, but don’t worry, “there’s a hack for that,” they say.
Despite the inundation of hack culture, we know that life can be hard and it doesn’t, necessarily follow, that it’s our fault when life sucks. However, the siren call, of a bulleted list, of easy hacks as a path to living our best life is irresistible when our exhausted brains need a break and time never slows down long enough for us to rest. We look to easy life hacks to find the ‘best’ short cut that can circumvent spending the time needed to gain knowledge that will guide us through the rough spots. We learn to hack our time, and ourselves, into tiny chunks that are divvied up between people and obligations until we wake up, one day, disillusioned with short cuts and quick fixes offered by life hack culture. We crave substance and meaning in our lives and feeling sad, lonely and untethered is just life. It’s not good or bad, it just is. Life is a lot like time because both are required to develop the patience and wisdom that can only be gained through experience.
Life cannot be hacked. Life is lived, not by a bulleted list of easy short cuts, but through direct experience.
Life is hard.
Life is sad.
Bulleted lists cannot provide a road map on how to work through the hard parts of life. Life and time are not wasted by taking the long path to work through the messy bits. Both are wasted when we use short cuts that diminish who we are down to a ‘top 10 list’.
Time doesn’t cause us pain or leave us aching inside. We do that to ourselves when we reject her. She brings us gifts, but we cannot see them until we accept her truth. The truth that the agony in our belly will only ease when we find the courage to embrace her and ask her to sit with us, just for a moment. We need her beside us while we search for the strength to gather our hacked up selves and unhack our lives. The heaviness we have carried around becomes lighter as each piece is put back in place and when we look up to see if she’s still there, Time is smiling on us. She is sitting beside us, not as an ethereal bitch, who refuses to be tamed, but, as a friend who offers four of the most precious gifts she possesses: wisdom, clarity, creativity and patience.
You don’t need bulleted lists of easy hacks to make your life meaningful. You just need to invite Time to join you for a cup of tea or coffee and just let go.
