For about the last ten years I have devoted my Sunday afternoons to work. Mike is usually playing golf, the kids have been grown for all that time and have their own interests, and the house is generally quiet. It's a day I can count on to be free of appointments. Here in the deep south, Sundays are devoted to church and family, and most of my friends are church people and certainly are family people. So mostly I'm left alone.
Before I retired and for the year immediately following my
retirement, I worked on work; that is, Sunday afternoon was pretty much like another work day and my labors were money-making ones. But gradually I left that world behind and became more and more absorbed in volunteer activities. This is still work; in fact, it's intense and emotionally draining and a bit scary. BUT - it pays nothing, so is difficult to quantify. Is this really a worthwhile way to spend a Sunday afternoon?
I found myself in a quandary: if I don't work on Sunday afternoon, what do I do? For the first time ever, I find myself with a block of time in which I can do whatever I like. I'm still so much a creature of old rules that the idea of doing nothing, that is, just sitting and staring at the wall, or perhaps taking a nap, is horrifying. What a waste!
Sadly, in this, my seventh decade, I'm all too aware of how few years, months, days, hours, moments, there really are in life. Wouldn't it be great if we grasped this essential fact from the very beginning, and pinned every bright minute in memory like a butterfly in a museum collection? But no, we spend our moments as though they were endless.
So now I have time. Time, which seemed such a precious commodity for so many years: I would get to this task or that just as soon as time permitted. And all those tasks never undertaken, seemingly so important and lurking in the corners of my mind accusingly, pointing their bony fingers at me, whispering, "Hurry, hurry, we are waiting for you" -- those tasks are forgotten now and clearly never needed doing in the first place.
What to do? Clean out a closet, wash a window, dig a new flower bed? Write a letter, work on a short story, email a friend? Watch a movie? Read a book? Take a nap? Or, desperate to get through the afternoon, take a walk?
At the end of our lives, do we look back at Sunday afternoons and wonder, where did the time go? And what does it take to feel as though we have used our time well, and to feel satisfied that we are slipping away from life with nothing left undone? Is this possible at all?
Because I'm one of those folks who likes to plan ahead.
So I think I'll make a promise to myself: on Sunday afternoons, I will post to my blog. And I'll come back and read this post every once in a while, just to touch base with my plan.
