If someone asks me what I wish for the most right now? I’d say time. More time in a day. More time in life. Out of the many essential things Covid-lockdown has made precious and shown available, to me, Time had become the most important and precious essentials of life. Being inside our very own bubble, doing absolutely anything we can think of without violating any restrictions, showed me just how much time we actually do have in a day. I had no worries then. Privileged, it may sound like, but it was my reality in little ol’ Wellington.
School had to shut for a bit. Work had closed for the meantime. Student allowance kept me moving. My job kept me as long as they could. Besides schoolwork, which consists mostly with a digital workload, anyway, only took a tiny chunk of my day. Even if it did, I didn’t have to spend a couple of hours traveling to and from University. I didn’t have to use my weekend to earn a living while selling other people’s stuff. I didn’t have to stay until University closes just to finish my projects. I didn’t have to forget about eating because I was so engulfed in uni work. I had all 24 hours and it was mine to use however I wanted.
Then life sort of went back to normal in New Zealand. The country managed to stay in lock down only about a month and half, probably less, then only had a few days of follow up lockdowns in just one city. The rest of the country were on alert, but it was business as usual nonetheless. Now, it’s totally back as if nothing happened. It was great, but that also meant now we really have to grind to survive life. No more freebies.
I crave time even more so now. As days become weeks, and weeks turn into months, suddenly the year is about to close again, I look back and wonder “whatever happened to time?”. It like it disappeared. But was it time that vanished? Or was I so engulfed in everyday distractions that I forget to take time? Or is life so demanding these days that I had to sacrifice time in order to live the life I had chosen to live? Does it matter, when in the end it’s all comes down to the unbalanced use of time?
There’s so much I want to do, learn and achieve yet it feels as though I’m racing time. Since the beginning of life, time only knows to move forward. But us people, we keep stopping, afraid to jump. We stand still, afraid of the unknown future. We pause, tired to keep going. We halt to change directions, and it’s like the beginning again. Time doesn’t stop. We stop. And sometimes, necessarily so in the journey of life. I feel myself growing up faster and yet I’ve yet to achieve the things I thought I’d achieved by now. Will I get there as fast as time, though, I wonder?
It’s now the next day. I started writing this journal in the morning, then I got distracted. And then time, once again vanished.
I question us though: Can we let go of the idea of time or will we let it dictate our life’s journey?
