There is only now

Photo credit: Amaya Gonzalez-Mollmann 2020

September is one of the busiest months of the year for a lot of people. It’s back-to-school month, and therefore moving month and major-change-month. It’s re-opening-of-many-advocacy-spaces month, and therefore often campaign-launch month.

And mostly, for all of us, it’s we-only-have-three-months-left-of-the-year month.

There are many ways to react to limited time. The most popular options are to give up or to lean in, choosing either to see the time left as too short, or to throw added energy at whatever we perceive the task to be. Either way, the end of the year will be upon us in 3 months, December 31 will roll over to January 1, and most everything will change and not change, as it always does.

But there is another way. At the end of the day, it is what we choose to do that determines whether 3 months feel long or short or irrelevant to our joy.

Just this evening, I jumped on my bike right after dinner to ride to the old wooden pier at dusk for my daily swim in the sea before it got truly dark. The long grass smelled heavenly in the cool evening air as I hurried down the hill towards the water. The little village I biked through was quietly buzzing with conversations with people going for evening walks and sitting in frontyards with after-dinner coffee and cake. The water was glorious, cool, salty, clear. From I left home till I was back were a mere 20 minutes on my watch, but eternities in my body and mind.

Time is a construct, as are money and gender and race. We have to deal with the terrible consequences of those constructs, and that frankly sucks. But we must remember that none of it is real.

There is only now, our fragile temporary bodies, and our eternal ability to love.