There will never be enough time.
There will never be enough time.
That was the thought that appeared, almost unbidden, in my mind.
I was leaving my mum and dad’s house after a beautiful weekend.
I and my wife and our daughters and my parents all recharged by shared time and love.
And some news, adjacent to the family, of terminal illness.
Deeply sad for one of us, hearts touched for all of us.
Too fresh the wounds of death and grief for something like this to wash on by as it can in other times… although perhaps shouldn’t even then.
Tim Urban’s blog, based partly on his realisation of how much of the time he has spent with his parents had already passed, inspires a Life Calendar that is hanging on my wall. It maps in a series of rows of 52 squares, each week of a life, from 0 to 90.
It should be a constant reminder that I am located somewhere on that calendar, my parents are further on and my daughters somewhere behind.
It should be a reminder of the brutal truth I once heard Fred Kofman share: that we are all going to die. And the best case - the absolute best case - is that you die after your parents and before your children.
And, in the moments when the fragility of life is brought to bear, that does not seem such a ‘good’ case.
No matter how we wish it, there will never be enough time.
That, in essence, is the core insight of Oliver Burkeman’s book, 4,000 Weeks. That so much of our obsession with time management, productivity and more, comes out of an unwillingness to accept that we are going to die and that we are therefore not going to be able to do everything.
But if we pretend to ourselves that with one more hack we can get one more thing done today, and then another extra thing tomorrow, then maybe we don’t actually have to accept the fact of our mortality.
That there will never be enough time.
Never enough country walks or meals together.
Never enough books by the fire or cuddles in the evening.
Never enough opportunities to tuck in the toddler who has wriggled out of her duvet, or help her get back to sleep when she wakes.
And, look. There’ll be plenty of people out there who will tell you things like ‘maybe the amount of time is perfect’, and ‘maybe it is meant to be just exactly as it is’ and ‘maybe you should change your mindset to one of abundance not one of scarcity’.
And to them I say: fuck you.
Life is tragic.
That’s the call of the melancholic.
And the best response is to feel that pain and tragedy. Savour it.
And then do something about it.
Live life in the knowledge that it will end.
Remember Braveheart: every man dies, not every man lives.
Bring ourselves back from the worries of tomorrow to the country walk today.
Bring ourselves back from the fretting about yesterday to the book by the fire right now.
Hold ourselves in the bedroom, with the toddler, with love, in the moment.
Stay there.
One more minute.
One more minute of love; not one more minute of resentment that she has interrupted your TV show.
Actually, maybe one more minute. But maybe two or three.
Because one day she won’t need tucking in any more.
And one day I won’t be here.
And one day she won’t be here.
‘I’ll see you again,’ I find myself saying.
To a friend. In a cafe. To a loved one.
I’ll see you again, I think.
Except once.
There will never be enough time.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
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