Relearning to Waste My Time

Recently, I’ve been feeling like I’m paradoxically going backwards and forwards in my life at the same time.

As an adult living in one of the most famous cities in history, running my own yoga and wellness business and married to my #1 teammate for all things life, for the past few years I have been constantly running after time.

After gently but unsuccessfully trying to get me to understand this for the past 7 years of our shared life, my ever-patient husband finally managed to convince me the other night that spending 2+ hours in the kitchen every single day just isn’t necessary or sustainable in our current lifestyle.

We have finally ordered a microwave.

The crazy thing is, once I was finally willing to give up on my fantasy of eating freshly cooked meals every day for every meal, it dawned on me just how impossible the standards were that I was trying to hold myself to. Healthy isn’t just about the physical; it’s also about the stress around your choices, the emotional and mental weight of being able to live well relatively easily.

The “healthy eating” lifestyle I was measuring myself against involved going to the market twice a week to buy fresh local produce, and cooking fresh meals every day, sometimes twice a day, with that produce. Or at the very least, on very busy weeks, doing a big healthy meal prep that would last for several days. Considering that our current apartment doesn’t have a second water hook-up to add a dishwasher (I know, it’s a travesty), and we both work full-time, I’m seriously wondering what have I been thinking these past years? Other than retired grandparents whose greatest joy is caring for their beloved families, who has time to run their private kitchen like that?

Thankfully, I have finally figured out that I do not.

I’ve officially been on vacation for one week (whoowhoo) and have spent almost every day so far fighting my workaholic tendencies. I have been forcing myself to ONLY relax, read, be artsy and sleep. How crazy is it that relaxing feels like it takes more effort from me than working?

I didn’t used to live like this.

My relationship with time has shifted drastically over the years, and I guess that’s to be expected. I remember thinking as a child that being 7 years old was such a very long time to live, and that if I ever made it to 17 I would be an old sage. I also remember being a tween and feeling like I was growing up too quickly, and my Mom telling me that time goes faster as you get older. Now, although when I look back at the past decade I feel like it all happened in a matter of weeks, I somehow also feel like 6 months in the future is a long time away to build the things I’m investing in.

When I was a kid, growing up in a small religious community in the middle-of-nowhere Kentucky, for one week every August whoever could would wake up before the crack of dawn to pick the cornfield together. Even if I had a hard time opening my eyes, I remember being so excited to hop into the back of the truck that was rounding everyone up as it passed by our house. My friends would be there too, and of course our corn picking was interspersed with playing tag amongst the stalks, picking bugs off the ears, and showing off the cuts we braved from the sharp leaves.

The rest of each day was spent shucking, silking, cutting, blanching, bagging, and freezing the corn to be eaten throughout the coming year. No one looked at a clock unless we were starting to feel hungry for lunch. No one cared how much we got done because we had all week. No one was in a rush. We all just sat around in different stations, doing the task before us and spending time together.

Those were some of the best days of my life.

That feeling of time being stretched even longer during summer days, like I had all the time in the world, followed me in many summer activities as a kid. Completing my chore of picking snails off the thornless raspberry bushes in our backyard. Getting the gang together to fill gallon buckets with wild blackberries in the cowfields. Of course we ate more than we kept, and by the end of the day we’d be lucky to have enough to sell to the elderly ladies in the community for a few bucks. I wonder what we must’ve looked like, covered in berry juices and dirt, as happy as could be, ringing their doorbells and asking if they’d like to buy some freshly picked blackberries? Frying up some squash from our neighbor’s garden, who came over and talked on the porch for thirty minutes just to drop it off. Swinging in the hammock under our big redbud tree, listening to the crickets and feeling like the sun would never quite finish setting.

Sometimes I yearn for those moments, when the clock was completely irrelevant to me.

And now, on vacation, I’m slowly remembering the precious gift of “wasting time.” Falling asleep when my body tells me it’s tired. Waking up whenever my body is ready, without any alarm. Taking as much time, sometimes even the whole day, to just sit with my morning coffee, and read, and journal, and not be in a hurry. Not have anything to accomplish. Not have any goals that I’m working towards. Forgetting what day it is.

And I realise that for me, these are some of life’s greatest luxuries.

The ability to soften and say yes to whatever my fancy may be at each moment, and the strength to say no, at least for a time, to striving, and producing, and being on top of the cleaning.

I don’t want to live in a city forever. I dream of a day that my husband and I will live in a cozy, manageable house in the country with a garden, dogs, cats, ducks and a panda. When we’ll raise our children knowing how to plant seeds in the ground, recognise when they’re ready for harvest, and lie watching the stars just because we have nothing better to do but be together and enjoy having all the time in the world.

But honestly, even though I once lived so in sync with the seasons and immersed in nature, that’s not where I found God. I found God here, in Paris, in this stressed-out, you’re-not-walking-fast-enough-on-the-sidewalk concrete metropolis. That may be a story for another time, but suffice it to say that living here, learning how to protect my inner garden, how to nurture my own needs, how to slow down and disconnect, and remembering how to waste time doing nothing is another step on that pathway of connecting to my Higher purpose and deeper Love.

All the ways in which living in nature allowed me space and time have been all the ways living in this vast city has taught me to rush, schedule every minute, and maximize potential. And in the midst of that, I have found and grown the deepest connection, with the most important relationship of my life: my own self.

So no matter the turn my path make take of being productive or time-wasting, I will stay present, and loving, and caring to my own precious self. Now I’m learning that I need more time, more softness, more space. So I’m creating it.

For the next few months at least, that means making quicker dinners. It may mean leaving the dishes until tomorrow. Right now it means sitting in the park with a book when there are a hundred other things I could be doing. Letting myself wake up without knowing what I’m going to do in the day ahead.

And truthfully, “wasting time” is not wasting it at all. All these ways in which I'm "wasting time," are actually ways I'm becoming more alive. I'm gifting myself some of the greatest luxuries time in life can offer.

I’ll still run my business, dream big dreams, make to-do lists, teach, and create plans. But moving forawrd I plan to leave more blank spaces in between.

If you're in Paris this summer maybe you’ll see me in a park somewhere, staring up at the clouds, just wasting time.