Tick-tock Body Clock-Spirit Clock
Posted on | September 21, 2009 | No Comments
Tick-tock, tick-tock — a sound I rarely paid attention to until recently. There would surely always be enough time for everything that I wished to do in my life. But perhaps a gentle reappraisal is in order.
As far as body clocks go, mine has been skewed from birth in the ‘night owl’ category and that is when I am most productive. Unless the darling husband and I are engaged in global gallivanting, I rise and fall with productivity and sleep according to my mood and writing flow.
The spirit clock has rarely concerned me since I am firm in my belief that this is one room of reality that I am currently dwelling in and the transition post-death is simply a matter of opening the door and walking into an adjacent room. So no fretfulness whatsoever is attached to that.
But ah — tick-tock, tick-tock — mortality and the will-I-get-it-all-done thought floats into my consciousness more and more in the last few years, partly because we are beginning to see the departure of friends and friends of friends as they walk into the next room. It is rare that a conversation is held with dear ones lately when at least one reference isn’t made to someone who has either died recently or is on the verge of doing so. And in my own case, one of my dearest friends is in end-stage cancer. I ache every time I look at her because she has told me that there was much more she wished to do with her life.
Now I begin to notice a moderate sense of urgency, not too oppressive but there nonetheless, to finish more books, write more essays, purge more possessions, streamline the lifestyle, just GO and travel when the mood strikes and leave no genuine goal undone. Ever so many writers over the centuries have paraphrased the ‘live as if it were your last day on earth’ idea and I have nodded and allowed those words to just glide over me. The live-each-day phrase suddenly tugs at my heart a bit and I fight the urge to berate myself for lost hours, weeks, years when productivity was elusive.
Softly, softly now. What have I Ieft undone — what have I left unsaid — how can I rectify those things on this very day?
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
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Deborah Harmes, Ph.D.
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