Why Telling Yourself, "I don't have enough time" is a Big Fat Lie
You’ve said it to yourself a hundred million gajillion times. I have too:
“I don’t have enough time to do X, Y, or Z” [sit on the floor and play pretend with my kids, spend an afternoon by the lake after work, do some painting]
“I’d love to visit my brother in Arizona but I don’t have time.”
“I want to learn to propagate indoor houseplants, if I only had more time.”
Lies. Dang lies.
There’s something about getting a terminal cancer diagnosis and being offered only “palliative care” that changes your perspective on time. Suddenly you face the prospect of having no time. And, in the same breath, you also have all the time in the world.
The Old Jennifer was always in a rush.
That was the BCD—Before Cancer Diagnosis—Jennifer.
The exuberant, hardworking, high-achieving lady with the strange sense of humor we all knew and loved (except those of us who didn’t love her, which sadly appears to have included herself…).
The New Jennifer? Not so much.
When something huge happens in your life—like giving birth to a baby, being in a car crash, or getting your left eyeball enucleated—time takes on a completely different quality. A lifetime can pass in an instant. An instant can pass in many, many hours.
As my 15-year-old daughter wrote about in a guest post last week, we all know that we will die. At the same time, none of us knows when.
How you spend your time each day is how you spend your life.
You can choose to tell yourself you have no time, as you sit down on the couch and lose countless hours to binge watching TV or scrolling social media (been there, done that, many, many, many times.) Or you can choose to go with your son to a hot springs you’ve never visited before, write the first 250 words on that book you’ve been thinking about writing your entire life, or take the vacation you’ve “never had time for” (and have convinced yourself you can’t afford).
This Mary Oliver poem swells my heart:
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
The New Jennifer is learning how to pray, how to be in this moment right now, and how to find joy in the tiniest simplest things. She is noticing the spikes on dandelion leaves and how homemade granola fills the house with the scent of cinnamon. She does not know what will happen tomorrow. There is only today.
May you learn these lessons without losing your left eye. Or your right one. Or any limb, for that matter.
You have all the time in the world. Even if you’re out of time.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading.
Love,
Jennifer
Related posts:
N=1
A Year After Losing My Eye to Ocular Melanoma…
My Mother Died a Year and a Half Ago and I’m Still so Sad
About the author:
Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning investigative journalist, author/co-author of eight books, and Fulbright grantee.
Last week I randomly ran into a few different people I hadn’t seen in a long time, they all said with exasperation- “I’m SO BUSY” when I asked how they were doing…
I have been battling chronic illness for many years and am no longer physically able to work, I wanted to respond to them with- you are so damn lucky you feel well enough to be busy. Instead, I said with a sympathetic smile “hang in there”. It sent me into a bit of a spiral and depression over my non busy life. I’m normally like Teflon when interacting with people who have no clue how unwell I am, but hearing it from multiple people- got to me. I’m lucky if I can accomplish a few house chores on any given day. At 51, “busy” seems to be the word for my age group. It’s honestly a pretty crappy response to hear from someone you haven’t seen in a long time. You don’t have time to talk to me- I get it.
I hope your message gets through to some people. Take the freaking time to chat for a minute people. You never know what someone is going through. Busy, can suck it.
Thank you, Jennifer. I lost my 21 yo son in 2015, and came within minutes of losing my husband in 2023. Every day is a gift. We will all be together again. When compared to eternity, the length of any of our life lines is small (and all relatively the same). On the other side, or in a place where there is no space or time, the difference of months or years in a lifetime is insignificant. All that matters is love, and I am grateful for all of the love you have shared and inspired during your time here. (P.S. Still praying for miracles).