Last week I spoke about time doing its thing and the importance of working with it. This can be difficult when fate throws funny things at you.
I’ve had my own share of oddness lately so here are some ideas on the issue of when our time gets prioritised by a disaster.
Not a drive I expected
Four weeks ago I was driving down a country road, and I found myself in a large queue going nowhere. I eventually got out of my car and walked up the line to investigate and saw two cars had been in quite a smash.
It was clearly a while ago and there were numerous people around. I used to be a lifeguard so figured I should at least check if they needed help. I was sure they wouldn’t need me and felt kind of dumb walking up to ask.
It turned out no one there had a clue about first aid and I suddenly found myself the most qualified person on a scene with 5 people involved in the crash.
3 were fine.
1 had some bruises and a concussion.
She needed a lie-down, to be kept warm and to go to a hospital for checks.Sadly the final lady had not worn her seatbelt.
She was unconscious with large visible wounds and blood seeping from her airways. She was clearly in a lot of pain.
Luckily, it seemed nothing was broken and her heart and breathing were stable. My biggest issue was keeping her distressed husband calm and preventing him from accidentally hurting her during his emotional meltdown.
15 minutes later emergency services arrived rendering me useless and I bumbled on home.
It’s funny how you think you have a normal drive home for dinner and actually what you get is an hour of much more important chaos than you ever imagined.
Out of nowhere, I ended up with my evening plans being wiped out and missing my dinner. Instead, I found myself contemplating;
the shortness of life
the idiocy of not wearing a seatbelt
the fear and the sadness of watching your loved ones dancing with death, with the powerless nature of a child.
Not a phone call I expected
Two weeks ago my parent’s neighbour was dealing with the fireplace when she heard an overwhelming ringing in her ears. She stood up and proceeded to inelegantly collapse on the floor.
I was working from my parents when my mum ran in to tell me I needed to help right now.
We had no clue what was wrong with this lady and didn’t want to wait 8 hours for an ambulance. So I helped carry her to the car and my dad drove her to the hospital 40 minutes away.
I vividly remember her telling us:
- how sorry she was for causing a scene
- she doesn’t have time for her life to go wrong
- the fact that she is “too independent for this shit”
I’m pleased to say she didn’t have a stroke but we still don’t know what happened.
Again out of nowhere something much more important just appeared and took over all priorities and I found myself pondering:
the shortness of life
the woefully inadequate ambulance services in the countryside
the fear of watching your plans melt away before your eyes with fate having zero care for what you actually want
Not the teaching prep my mum expected
Following this, my mum told me a story:
When my mum was due to return to teaching after her pregnancy leave for me, she had lesson plans to organise. The summer had flown by with the chaos of kids and social lives and still, the lessons were unplanned.
She’d scheduled for my sister and me to play for a few days at her good friend Emma’s house, who also had children. Finally, she’d have the space and time to get the lessons on track before she started teaching again after a few years out.
Preparing to take us to her friends, she received a call from a doctor who was at Emma’s house.
He’d been called there for an emergency and needed my mum to come over immediately and collect Emma’s children. There was something wrong with Emma’s brain and she needed to go to the hospital and the kids needed to be looked after.
Instead of planning school lessons, she ended up with a house full of kids and a friend in an emergency hospital. In the early hours of the next morning, shockingly, Emma died from her brain tumour.
The doctor called to tell my mum the news, but Emma’s husband instructed her that she mustn’t tell the children. So my mum not only had a dead friend, but she had to entertain the two kids and lie to them about the fact they no longer had a mother.
Eventually that evening the kids were collected. In the chaos, there was no follow-up support for my mum.
She had to start teaching the next week and had no preparation for the lessons. She couldn’t sleep from the combination of trauma and panic about what she was going to do at work.
This turned into some of the most difficult weeks in my mum’s life.
The one thing she is grateful for is that she never leaves important things till the last minute. Such an overwhelmingly negative experience means that she hates to feel like she might get caught unawares with important things to get done.
She makes space in her life for potential disasters to happen, without them messing up her important plans.
Time doing its thing
Last week I spoke about time and how we use it.
Time is the ultimate healer. Yet we don’t plan to use it for dealing with disasters or any associated recovery that might be needed.
We allot our use of time with our busy plans and we still don’t have enough of it to go around.
Sometimes fate completely sprawls over our expectations and time gets used how it wants to be used, regardless of your own volition.
Instead of fighting it’s often better to go with the flow.
Make a space or have it taken
I spoke about the importance of being friends with time instead of enemies, but how do we invite Mr time in when he wants to take over everything and mess shit up?
Like a naughty toddler. If you place them in a safe room, they can’t cause as much damage. Do you have room for time when it wants to be a dick?
Re-assessing my own physical room lately, and after a big clear out it still isn’t right. I have a place for everything long-term.
I don’t have space for daily things, so they end up on the floor because there is nowhere to put them.
Looking at my parents’ house, they have an enlarged version of this issue. They have a room dedicated to making videos but it isn’t used daily.
As there is nowhere in the house to put ‘stuff’ it kind of ends up in this room, which makes it hard for them to make videos…
Space to put crap
There is always be physical crap in your life.
If there isn’t a space for it, you have a mess.Choose the space that gets taken before it gets chosen for you.
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There will always be time-consuming crap in your life.
If you don’t plan a time-space for it, then it makes a mess.
Choose what gets taken or it will be chosen for you.
Life is short
We want to plan to use as much of our time as possible to make the most of things.
Ironically, that might mean actually planning some dead time and having room for unplanned chaos as it arises. That way, the things we genuinely want to do won’t get sacrificed without our say.
Besides the events I mentioned above, this year a good friend ended up in a coma from a car crash and my uncle has been diagnosed with two large tumours.
Life is short and there is no guarantee that you or the people you love will be around in a year’s time.
Firstly, be nice to everyone and look after yourself.
Secondly, prioritise the things that matter and make the most of every day you are blessed with. Be grateful for the people you get to share time with.
Don’t wait for a better time to do the important things, because it might never happen.
There will always be some crap or other in the way, have a place to put it so you can get on with your life.