As we breathe relief that election season is over, and enter the winter season, with its holidays and New Year’s resolutions queuing up, it is common to search for ways to expand time, to try to relieve ourselves from the feeling of never enough. Without admitting it, we commit a tiny act of hubris when we try to buck the reality of finite time in our desperation to squeak out a bit more.
Our dear helpful friends join us in our denial, suggesting we practice the fine art of “time management.” Yet time will not be managed. When we succeed at streamlining our tasks, the new space we create inevitably generates more to do. Our efficiency exponentially expands our busy life, and allows others to heap more on as we become known as a person who “gets things done.” The more we endeavor to streamline and save time, the more plugged into our hamster wheel we become.
Like a mad bargain with Time itself, we participate in the illusion of creating time in the future, in exchange for giving up time now. The trap is the perpetual state of giving up the quality of the present moment for a future when life will be easy — the fantasy of getting ahead.
One of my favorite of Shakespeare’s monologues is from Richard II. It endures because each of us is our own king, and it is our “vain conceit” to imagine we may be able to manage time — to escape our own mortality if only for one holiday season.
“ … within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear’d and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humor’d thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!”
— William Shakespeare
The life-affirming lesson from Richard II is that the inevitability of death is that which makes every day we have to walk the earth valuable, and the choice of how we spend that time … precious. The goal then is not to eke out more, but to allow its preciousness to make us shed what is not dearly worthwhile. What will you choose to do right now? You’ll discover two standouts related to these musings in this Winter issue:
Cover story Jon Bernthal takes a look at a star of the screen, taking his time to rest and restore in Ojai. (page 24) Bernthal, like many, seeks work-life balance and finds time in the quiet Ojai life.
Home birth is a topic we looked at (Winter 2021); home death is our next. Ojai’s death midwife offers personal preference, and respect to death choices. Bringing death out of the shadows with an embrace for its part in life. Explore the face of mortality, as we open our eyes to Tending to Dying (page 72).
Enjoy the gift of the present moment. Feast a little, right now; it's your time for the spending, we at Ojai Magazine offer stories in full respect and value of your choice.
