Why is it that in the late hours of the night, you feel as though what you are seeing, feeling, dreaming, thinking matter more than anywhen else? Why is there this rush of clarity, disguising sleeplessness? It's probably all chemicals.
Writers have writer's block... can thinkers get their own kind? Not a rut, not lost, not confused, so much as dead-ended.
Okay, on to a topic - our lifetimes. I believe the average human life-span today to be really long. Really really long. In fact, your own life-span is longer than any length of time you've ever known - though true, that's just a play on ideas. And for 'Life-span' I am putting aside all those who suffer fatal accidents and losses and those who chose to leave the earth early. I'm focussing on those who will be going until into their retirement age. Wowee, that is a LOT of living. I've been around 26 years now, and, to think of all that I have lived in that time feels overwhelming. I know my memory isn't up to much and so my recollections are patchy, but were they clear and comprehensive, I'd have to be one hell of a librarian to keep it all in check. You experience masses and masses of actions, feelings, thoughts, conversations, sensations of your own and witness those of others. Plus you have all the imagined explorations of worlds and times beyond your own in stories, fantasies and dreams. I only have to stop *doing* to witness the passing of just a few minutes and the enormity of how long just one hour or one day really is. And that's a drop/ocean to a lifetime. Yes, some things go slow, very slow, and complicated matters can change and develop over great lengths of time, but I'm not thinking about measuring lengths of time to any quantified scientific scale. I'm not concerning myself with the relative standpoint, for example, where one life is but the fragment of a flicker in the ageing of a star. No, I'm concerned with the great expanse of living time people have.
I come back to it often. Think of a special event or time, or a really great day where you did many things. That was ONE day.
People say how time flies for them or how this week or year seems to have just gone so fast. I never really sympathise well with this. I don't feel like the days or weeks have dragged on, but I am aware they have been there and how long they took to live through. Again, that's not a negative sense of time passing slowly, it's an awareness of the time that has gone by. Maybe people say this because some things from last month or year still 'feel' so close. Maybe people say it because they cannot sense all living they have done in that time - all the things they have seen and done, or think that normal day-to-day living doesn't 'count'.
I do get the sense that some people develop into a way of thinking about the passing of time being demarcated by big or significant events. People seem to use these 'events' as as markers in their memory timelines or in their views of what's to come. Things like their holidays, their friend's party, their friend's wedding, the new football season, that special night out, their anniversary, their buying of a new car, their moving house, or on a smaller scale, their weekend. I am sure there are a number of private experiences that fit into this timeline as important markers too, though they may not be shared in those "So, what have you been up to? / What are your plans?" conversations. These events/experiences are useful for getting a perspective and for fitting memories and plans in the right order. But it's not so good if your expectations or your recollections of life focus just around these. Every day, no matter if an 'event' occurs or not, you still have the 14 or so waking hours, and there's still as much living in it, be it interesting to you or not. Those who've had near-death experiences speak about making the most of the time we have... I see this not as meaning "Do Loads Of Cool Stuff As Much As Possible" but "appreciate and be aware of the time you are living and make the most of it where you can in the way you want to". I think figuring your life by 'events' leaves you in danger of wondering where all the 'other' time went.
I have sometimes wondered, as I'm sure have many, on the changes that would occur were our situation as human beings were different. For example, think of all the ways life, relationships, work and society would necessarily change if:
* people lived half as long as they now do on average and ageing was a faster process (live fast, die young rockstar lifestyles?)
* people lived twice as long as they now do (multiple marriages the norm?)
* people didn't need to sleep (work 12 hours, 12 hours free?)
* people hibernated for months over winter
* ageing was lost and people would only die when they chose to, by accident or disease
* by aid of machines and computers, most human employment was redundant and people needed to only work for two days a week to earn a decent living.
The 'time' I am mainly interested in is our perceived passing of time. The kind that would be affected if we could think faster/slower. If our brains worked twice as fast, time would appear to run slower for us as we could think more things in a shorter time and we could distinguish more detail in movements and sounds. Life would be like watching a film play in slow motion, although maybe we would learn to move/talk faster to compensate. Conversely, if we thought slower then time would pass by very quickly as we would have trouble keeping up with changes around us. Possibly this change in the perceived passing of time is one way in which different animals experience the world (if, indeed, they perceive at all).
The 'perceived time' we have in our lifetime is long. It may not be long enough in some people's estimation to do all the things they would like to do or see all the things they would like to see, but that is more a realisation of how boundless the potentials are for things for us to see and do than it is a realisation of our short lives.
I feel overwhelmed by having already seen and done and lived so much. I feel fascinated by how little I can know the countless things I am still to experience (touch wood).
...
This is the point where I guess I may lose you or you may wish to leave if you are reading this, as it becomes about a personal issue.
I also have a problem with time. When it comes down to the minutes and the hours. I feel happy when time is my own to do with as I please. I feel free when I have it and trapped when I don't. When there are expectations or tasks that I need to do at set times or before certain times I can go into a kind of psychological rebellion against it. A consequence is that I'm not a prompt person, as I want to have more time of my own and try to use as much of it as I can before I have to give it up to something else. So I am often late when I try to do too much and/or do things too late right before when I should be getting going to somewhere else.
And now, the big problem for myself that I keep coming a cropper against: Tasks set to do in my own time, like coursework or homework, where I have to be willing and voluntary about giving my time over to them when I choose to, are almost impossible. And I'm not very good at obeying my own timetables, if I create them I make the rules and I can change the rules.
This isn't all because I think my 'own time' is so valuable or that what I choose to do myself in free time is better or more important; it's a deeper sense of being free and being bound - of satisfaction and of loss. How acute those feelings are varies greatly. It's why I do activities that I can get lost and escape into... where I am no longer aware of time passing, nor do I care.
If we're ever spending time together and it's a quiet time where not a lot is going on or being said, you may sense my discomfort. It's nothing about you, but I start to worry. What should we be doing? What do they want to do? Whose time is this? What is the polite thing to do? Am I wasting their time? Would it be rude and socially inappropriate to do what I want? Can I indulge in a private activity like reading if I then feel like it? Would it be rude to leave the room for a while and do something else, or to call somebody else on the phone? I am not a hyperactive person who always needs to be doing things and on the go, but I can sometimes get very uncomfortable when idling in small company (in larger groups it tends not to matter as activities and conversations flow about the group all the time with people engaging to changing degrees). My awareness of the passing of time (mine and theirs) is heightened.
I know the solution to these problems is to relax about time, let it flow and use it as it makes sense to when you need to or want to. I state these problems not as ones that need a solution to be figured out. I am not confused. I am expressing and explaining what they are - admitting them and hoping from here I can move on or deal with them. Small steps, over a long time... maybe I'll get somewhere better.
2007/12/16
2007/12/12
My 2007
<rambly intro on>
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Some families, I have learned, write a Chistmas letter detailing their familiar updates for the year gone by and send them to friends - kind of like an annual family diary update, a short blog of the year, just one or two pages will do.
Wikipedia - Christmas Letters
How To - the_familyupdate_christmas_letter
One can only imagine the seriousness of this for some; the rules of what is and isn't appropriate to include; what to be so bold about as to assume the audience should take an interest in reading. Would you use it to present your achievements for some peer respect, or even envy; would you use it as an outpouring for your tribulations for the year, earning sympathy. Maybe in your hard and troubling year you have survived just well enough to put on a brave face about it come the year-end letter, but be distastefully proud in your woe-is-me martyrdom to the assault of life's tribulations. Maybe you just like sharing personal anecdotes to entertain. Another possibility would be to bring a closeness and awareness of your own lives into the lives of others - those who are, or you think should be, your closest friends in the world - where your business in living your own life really hasn't allowed you the social time to keep up with those friends as much as you would have liked to. With this intention, it would be fair to assume, you would like those friends to send their own letters in return so that the 'catching up' can be mutual. Plus it saves a lot of embarrassed idle-yet-searching chit-chat at the next big gathering or event, such as a mutual peer's wedding. You can't really remember anything about the recent lives of your 'friends' but you don't feel it polite to admit to this by asking too much. Oh no! A letter such as this gives that awareness. People can give away what they want, and they can hold private what they want. They too can read about what they want, or not bother with that they don't honestly care for. And finally, it allows for lots of gossip and judgements to be made about those who write to you behind their backs... as you and your family or other friends can pick at all the interesting facts about other people's lives, or speculate at the events and emotions unmentioned, but implied. Hmm. I guess, as many things, it's what you make it.
With this is mind, I decided to write one. I do this for myself, to get my own bearing on my own year. Egocentric braggart? Nah. I don't ask for an audience, it's about letting these things out. And writing them and filing them away privately isn't 'out'.
It's just another blog entry.
<rambly intro off>Wikipedia - Christmas Letters
How To - the_familyupdate_christmas_letter
One can only imagine the seriousness of this for some; the rules of what is and isn't appropriate to include; what to be so bold about as to assume the audience should take an interest in reading. Would you use it to present your achievements for some peer respect, or even envy; would you use it as an outpouring for your tribulations for the year, earning sympathy. Maybe in your hard and troubling year you have survived just well enough to put on a brave face about it come the year-end letter, but be distastefully proud in your woe-is-me martyrdom to the assault of life's tribulations. Maybe you just like sharing personal anecdotes to entertain. Another possibility would be to bring a closeness and awareness of your own lives into the lives of others - those who are, or you think should be, your closest friends in the world - where your business in living your own life really hasn't allowed you the social time to keep up with those friends as much as you would have liked to. With this intention, it would be fair to assume, you would like those friends to send their own letters in return so that the 'catching up' can be mutual. Plus it saves a lot of embarrassed idle-yet-searching chit-chat at the next big gathering or event, such as a mutual peer's wedding. You can't really remember anything about the recent lives of your 'friends' but you don't feel it polite to admit to this by asking too much. Oh no! A letter such as this gives that awareness. People can give away what they want, and they can hold private what they want. They too can read about what they want, or not bother with that they don't honestly care for. And finally, it allows for lots of gossip and judgements to be made about those who write to you behind their backs... as you and your family or other friends can pick at all the interesting facts about other people's lives, or speculate at the events and emotions unmentioned, but implied. Hmm. I guess, as many things, it's what you make it.
With this is mind, I decided to write one. I do this for myself, to get my own bearing on my own year. Egocentric braggart? Nah. I don't ask for an audience, it's about letting these things out. And writing them and filing them away privately isn't 'out'.
It's just another blog entry.
#################################################
Dear somehow interested reader,
Well, what a year it’s been! International, emotional, life-changing, unexpected and possibly defining directions for some years to come. Don’t let that adjectival list imply a year of thrills and excitement, though such things have featured in part.
I saw in 2007 in a cheap hotel in Kathmandu. Well, I didn't really 'see it in' as I was unconscious! I probably went to sleep about 4pm on December 31st, waking to a whole new country I’d only just landed in. I was looking for something new, I was looking for where I was, where I was going. I’d fluffed up becoming a teacher and needed to reorient myself. My feelings were still pointed in the teaching direction - an entrenched ambition and impression of my own future - and they needed loosening before I could concentrate on anything new.
In Nepal, I was exploring, I was hiding, I was embracing, I was escaping, I was dreaming, I was frightened, I was living, I was trying. I achieved things that brought me confidence, in relations to people and in independence.
In my heart I was turning over things that had lingered for a very long time. I was seeking closure. So I wrote letters to some people, some letters that asked for no reply. Mostly they were thank you letters that really mattered.
By the end of 2006, I didn’t quit know what to make of a love that was given to me, and I knew I wasn’t ready to believe in myself in returning it as she deserved. I was flattered, and reflecting a great bond that simply didn’t arise within me to the same degree. Everything needed to slow down, I was hurting her, and didn’t want that anymore. At this distance in Nepal, the gift could be held, and held dear, but also put down, to be able to move on – such are the benefits of being in another world (as being in another culture and country often is). When I returned from Nepal, it was time to move on. That much she had decided; it was fair enough.
I moved, then, to Essex for just over five months. Living in a house with an elderly deaf gentleman called Barry – set in his patterns of living, but a very kind man. I made friends who were volunteering like me, from the US and from Korea. I was working, but not working. I was arranging the companionship and support that I would give to some people as they wanted it - because of their physical or mental impairments. It was rewarding, it was boring, it was frustrating, it was challenging, it was often so simple it was tiring. I also met someone in this time who just hated me, who seemed to get more angry the more time we spent together. We were circumstantial housemates, and I don’t know anyone else I have agitated unwittingly to such a degree before. It was more than upsetting and frustrating. But it was an interesting contrast to be verbally knocked right down and told what a low-life you are when all around you recently people having been thanking you and declaring your benevolence. Neither extreme did I deserve, in my opinion.
I went to Cuba this year with a gentleman who considered himself something of a James Bond in coolness and adventure and needed a travelling companion to get by. I went as a volunteer support worker in a role as a friend. It was something of a tropical paradise of a resort and the whole experience was something else, somewhere else, and it doesn’t even really fit in my map of 2007. It’s like flicking the channel to Wish You Were Here for five minutes or so, and getting whisked away.
Since September, and now, I am back at university, this time in Brighton. This time studying to be a Social Worker. It will take me two years. The pressures and self-management troubles I have known for years are here, of course. The course is shambolic and very light. The placement is filled with lovely people, but little purpose (not their fault, I am to spend 100 days in placement as a trainee social worker where there is no existing social worker or social worker role at that place of work). Despite being here, then, for 3 ½ months, my output has spluttered and barely begun and I feel I’ve learnt nowhere near the amount I should have done for the time and money gone by. But I have hopes for 2008. I have to aim lower and work harder – this is my great challenge. I’ve been aiming too high and working too little too late since 1998! (and that’s much more serious than it sounds)
I’ve been in love with Caroline since late 2005. That’s a story in itself, but not for here. Now she loves me to. Aww. Since late 2007. I’m eventually irresistible. In all seriousness, though, this now means that my life has a certain direction of hope and happiness with her, one that only existed in what I could believe as hopeful make-believe. Considering I’ve felt a certain futility in my feelings towards her for such a relatively long time to the more mutual now, I find myself a little dizzied. Try saying ‘denial’ to yourself in a variety of inflections and degrees of stress – I’ve experienced most of them in my trying to cope before now with my feelings for her. I don’t want this sounding like it has been some kind of emotional ‘trap’ leading to looming inevitabilities, but it does make happy recent times seem slightly unreal or worthy of caution. With just a month or so of mutual togetherness, our futures are being woven in conversation. I’ve been doing it in imagination for years, but now it’s more serious. In this, I am really looking forward to 2008. Easy does it / To hell with caution, let’s hold hands and run!
In 2007, I’ve made myself quite alone. I miss my friends and need to turn that around a bit. Sorry for anyone I’ve been ignoring. I thought I might be living with Stu or Ben or Paul about now at the beginning of the year, but that didn’t quite pan out. I wonder how everyone one really is, because I don’t really know.
Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for a great leap year ahead,
Your friend (I hope),
Mark
Well, what a year it’s been! International, emotional, life-changing, unexpected and possibly defining directions for some years to come. Don’t let that adjectival list imply a year of thrills and excitement, though such things have featured in part.
I saw in 2007 in a cheap hotel in Kathmandu. Well, I didn't really 'see it in' as I was unconscious! I probably went to sleep about 4pm on December 31st, waking to a whole new country I’d only just landed in. I was looking for something new, I was looking for where I was, where I was going. I’d fluffed up becoming a teacher and needed to reorient myself. My feelings were still pointed in the teaching direction - an entrenched ambition and impression of my own future - and they needed loosening before I could concentrate on anything new.
In Nepal, I was exploring, I was hiding, I was embracing, I was escaping, I was dreaming, I was frightened, I was living, I was trying. I achieved things that brought me confidence, in relations to people and in independence.
In my heart I was turning over things that had lingered for a very long time. I was seeking closure. So I wrote letters to some people, some letters that asked for no reply. Mostly they were thank you letters that really mattered.
By the end of 2006, I didn’t quit know what to make of a love that was given to me, and I knew I wasn’t ready to believe in myself in returning it as she deserved. I was flattered, and reflecting a great bond that simply didn’t arise within me to the same degree. Everything needed to slow down, I was hurting her, and didn’t want that anymore. At this distance in Nepal, the gift could be held, and held dear, but also put down, to be able to move on – such are the benefits of being in another world (as being in another culture and country often is). When I returned from Nepal, it was time to move on. That much she had decided; it was fair enough.
I moved, then, to Essex for just over five months. Living in a house with an elderly deaf gentleman called Barry – set in his patterns of living, but a very kind man. I made friends who were volunteering like me, from the US and from Korea. I was working, but not working. I was arranging the companionship and support that I would give to some people as they wanted it - because of their physical or mental impairments. It was rewarding, it was boring, it was frustrating, it was challenging, it was often so simple it was tiring. I also met someone in this time who just hated me, who seemed to get more angry the more time we spent together. We were circumstantial housemates, and I don’t know anyone else I have agitated unwittingly to such a degree before. It was more than upsetting and frustrating. But it was an interesting contrast to be verbally knocked right down and told what a low-life you are when all around you recently people having been thanking you and declaring your benevolence. Neither extreme did I deserve, in my opinion.
I went to Cuba this year with a gentleman who considered himself something of a James Bond in coolness and adventure and needed a travelling companion to get by. I went as a volunteer support worker in a role as a friend. It was something of a tropical paradise of a resort and the whole experience was something else, somewhere else, and it doesn’t even really fit in my map of 2007. It’s like flicking the channel to Wish You Were Here for five minutes or so, and getting whisked away.
Since September, and now, I am back at university, this time in Brighton. This time studying to be a Social Worker. It will take me two years. The pressures and self-management troubles I have known for years are here, of course. The course is shambolic and very light. The placement is filled with lovely people, but little purpose (not their fault, I am to spend 100 days in placement as a trainee social worker where there is no existing social worker or social worker role at that place of work). Despite being here, then, for 3 ½ months, my output has spluttered and barely begun and I feel I’ve learnt nowhere near the amount I should have done for the time and money gone by. But I have hopes for 2008. I have to aim lower and work harder – this is my great challenge. I’ve been aiming too high and working too little too late since 1998! (and that’s much more serious than it sounds)
I’ve been in love with Caroline since late 2005. That’s a story in itself, but not for here. Now she loves me to. Aww. Since late 2007. I’m eventually irresistible. In all seriousness, though, this now means that my life has a certain direction of hope and happiness with her, one that only existed in what I could believe as hopeful make-believe. Considering I’ve felt a certain futility in my feelings towards her for such a relatively long time to the more mutual now, I find myself a little dizzied. Try saying ‘denial’ to yourself in a variety of inflections and degrees of stress – I’ve experienced most of them in my trying to cope before now with my feelings for her. I don’t want this sounding like it has been some kind of emotional ‘trap’ leading to looming inevitabilities, but it does make happy recent times seem slightly unreal or worthy of caution. With just a month or so of mutual togetherness, our futures are being woven in conversation. I’ve been doing it in imagination for years, but now it’s more serious. In this, I am really looking forward to 2008. Easy does it / To hell with caution, let’s hold hands and run!
In 2007, I’ve made myself quite alone. I miss my friends and need to turn that around a bit. Sorry for anyone I’ve been ignoring. I thought I might be living with Stu or Ben or Paul about now at the beginning of the year, but that didn’t quite pan out. I wonder how everyone one really is, because I don’t really know.
Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for a great leap year ahead,
Your friend (I hope),
Mark
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