Time Piece

My neck and shoulders have been wound up so tight lately I had to pay a strong man $100 to torture me for an hour. He worked the muscles in my neck uncoiling them bit by bit just so my ears didn’t have to sit on my shoulders anymore. I’m in real pain now like ten billion blind pimples are erupting on the surface of my neck but I know it was worth every penny just to get through this time of year. The silly season is so stressful it makes you wonder why we all volunteer for it every year. Why do we make such a fuss about a date on a calendar? Work is incredibly busy, we are all incredibly broke, the days are incredibly hot (down here anyway) and for some reason we all need to have every loose end tied up before the clock struck 12 on the 31st. We emphasise the ending of things so much in our lives the stress of it erupts like a volcano, which may also explain why domestic violence and suicide is on the rise at this joyous time of year. Now I am not the Grinch, in fact, I love this time of year but for all the reason that seem to be lost by this ever commercialise, soulless society we have created. Big business has taken the joy out of Christmas or has it? Surely robots aren’t running the joint and it is something that we, the human beings, have actually caused. I’ve never had much money but thankfully I’ve never be desolate either but I have always had the ability to find joy in the smallest things. I love simple pleasures and I love taking time to absorb them so it always baffles me how fast people consume things. Surely the pleasure is missed in the whirlwind they insist on creating? Take some time people; take some time with the people that matter and enjoy the fact that time is passing you by. Stop rushing time and it will cease to be your enemy. If we all know the stress and sweat that went into making Christmas dinner the food wouldn’t taste so good in our overstuffed mouths. What I want to see is peace and not just the “on earth” kind. I want to sit at a table without a clock and filled with faces without stress. If we must end a year, if we must count days off like they matter then can we please give them the respect they deserve and spend time without fuss, without money, without angst and just be there in the moment with the people that matter to us . Have we all forgotten what it means to just be still and be thankful for everything we have? We move so fast these days we have lost the art of appreciation which breeds our disappointment and rage. I live alone and I love it. It is the best part of me as it is the only thing that gives me the time to be me. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone, I don’t have to fill my day with misguided purpose and I don’t have to be on time within my own space. When I was 17 living in the tropics a strange and wonderful Turkish man deliver a Mary Jane monologue that changed how I saw the world. He spoke of time and how it cruelly robs us of true purpose and even at 17 I sensed the profoundness in his rant. Since then I have hated time and the pieces that count it. This may also explain my deep hatred for New Years Eve and people’s insistence on marking that one tick over to the New Year like it will change how they live their lives. Newsflash people; 2014 will be just as stressful, just as ill spent, just as unsatisfying and synthetic as 2013 because you haven’t changed. Just because time changed doesn’t mean you do. Time will pass anyway but it will not give birth to wisdom, growth, or our ability to change yet we seem to mark this time of year like it will. We make resolutions with everything but the intention of actually keeping them all in the misguided hope that time will deliver something different this year but last time I checked time wasn’t our master and it certainly wasn’t something that magically. Time will pass anyway people regardless of whether you fill every possible second of it will ceremony or fuss. It doesn’t need to be checked every few minutes on your smart phone, watching it won’t make it move faster and everything doesn’t need to be dictated by its tick. Today is just a day, the 25th is just a day and the 31st is another. But in saying this there is something else that needs to be said. Time is not our master because you are. Time isn’t even in the equation that makes up the sum of who you are. You determine how time is spent, you give it meaning, and you make it something tangible. Not the clock, not the ever increasing seismic pressure building under our sculls but just you. This brings me back to Christmas and New Year and build up it creates. Yes it is commercialised and horrible and pointless and all about greed but only if you want it to be. Yes you can stress about cooking the perfect Turkey and having enough food or you could just come to the table and be. You could make this day the most stressful, tiring, overwhelming day of the year or you could just be. You could spend hundreds of dollars that you don’t have on presents that mean nothing or you could just be present yourself in the moment, at this time and just be there. Just being is something us humans have forgotten how to be. We go through the motions and learn the lines and play the parts that we think we should instead of creating our own meaning, our own time. This is why my ears live on my shoulders, this is why I keep checking the clock and my diminishing bank account, and this is why I have lost the Christmas Spirit this year. I want to spend the day with people I actually care about, doing nothing in particular. I want to spend New Year’s without the noise of expectations and the pressure to mark the time. I want to sit alone and listen to wonderful music and drink wonderful spirits and think of the wonderful things that I choose to mark time with. I doubt I will stay up to midnight as it means so little to me as the next day I will wake and a new day will begin and it won’t feel any different because I won’t be, but for now that is OK with me. I will not count down the time till midnight because I don’t want to count time anymore, I don’t want this pain in my neck and shoulders and I don’t want things to mean more than they have to. I am not the Grinch, the party pooper or the killjoy, I am simply just taking my time while you all chase your tails. Slow down as something the fastest way to get there is to take your time.