I’ve just watched an advert with a 52-year-old old ballet dancer. I’ve actually no idea what the advert was for, but the fact she was 52 was what I was to pay attention to, I think.
At 45, a 52-year-old ballet dancer doesn’t make me think, ‘Wow, she’s 52!’
If I was 25 years younger I’m pretty sure my first thought would have been, ‘That’s amazing, for her age!’ Ageist? Yes, I was 25 years ago. Aged 10, like most children, I thought 35 was ancient. As we both know the older we get, when we have more time behind us than in front, we stop seeing the future out there, we notice it hurtling towards us.
As I watched the video a thought popped up, ‘Dawn, take up ballet again, you can do that’, I don’t think so was the second.
Sure I could do ballet but unlike said woman in the video I know I haven’t practiced and committed to that art in 30 years. She obviously hasn’t let anything slide, stayed focused and used her body for what she loves to do that it’s still doing it now. Not that I actually want to do ballet. And it’s not about age. But it is about noticing that where once I thought time was infinite, and it’s not.
‘Live each day to the fullest as if it’s your last day,’ they say.
Yeah, we know. But we get lost in the empty, or just trying – at times – to keep a little in reserve to make it through until an episode of Game of Thrones comes on, We say, ‘I’ll start tomorrow, tomorrow is a new day’, we put plans, ideas, passions, loves aside until the non-existent tomorrow never arrives. We actually think that we are able to reclaim time. Or make it timely for us. As if it’s going to unwind and come back to us.
At the time of the death of my friend a couple of years ago, I sat beside her bed for 5 days. She never woke up. 5 days is a long time to sit in a situation where you feel helpless and all hope is slowly leaving. You think a lot. You become very aware of the state of your own life, and you pay attention to the moment, you come to realise that most of what you are doing day in and day out is just filling up time.
I made promises that week. To her and to my life. Here we are nearly 700 days later and it takes a video of a woman I’ve never met before doing ballet for me to learn what I thought I got back then at my friends’ untimely death.
We happen in time. We are running through it. We think years, months, weeks, days and live by the hands on a clock, but clocks stop for you when you’re gone. Death is never untimely, but we sure as hell lead untimely lives.
We’ve all got stuff we need to take care of, we all have responsibilities from previous choices we made earlier in time. Maybe the person who made them is not the same person sitting here reading this and wishes they had chosen differently.
Yeah, well, we didn’t, did we? We’ve all made choices we wish we hadn’t. But, if you have time, which you do, you can choose again.
Change isn’t always easy.
I get that. I do. It’s uncomfortable. We are surrounded by fear, scare messages and doubt, outside and in our own thinking. But still. Time doesn’t stop. We do. We have to move. It’s not enough to say you want to climb a mountain, you have to take a step towards it, anything else is just words and good intentions.
Living and transformation take energy.
Some days I haven’t got any either. Yes, I would rather have a glass of red, watch Downton Abbey and lick the chilli flavour from tortillas. Time doesn’t stop as we lie on the sofas we’ve placed about our lives. We do. If something is important to your own happiness, well-being and quality of life then you have to take the hurdle over the sofa, the tiredness, the apathy, the doubt, the fears, the ‘what if’s’ and ‘maybe some days’. Learn to hurdle if hurdles are in your way. Remove barriers, and quit putting more down in your path.
You have to find the reason to do, feel it, and it will outweigh all the excuses not to. To take steps. Start. Walk forward.
Pay attention to the choices you’re going to make today because the consequences and fall out of them you’re going to be reaping the benefits of – or not – one day soon.
Take accountability for those that you’ve already made, don’t get mad you didn’t stick at the ballet barre or honed a pax de Deux, start from where you are today, not yesterday.
And where no choice has been made yet, make it one that you are happy to carry with you through your time and in time, so that when you get to horizon of your future, you might be honest and admit you maybe didn’t live each day to the fullest, but you did make sure you were full of life.
For pondering:
- Think of something you loved to do but you no longer pursue because you feel you don’t have enough time, secretly you would love to take it up again.
- Write down all the ways you don’t have the time: ‘I no longer [insert thing] because [insert excuse/reason/fear].
- Consider that life is untimely. What time are you waiting on?
- What if you made your time your own? What no longer needs so much of your attention?
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