Relatively speaking

The day is as cloudy as my head, my nose fogged up and my eyes heavy like the sky. It is grey and leafless and my inspiration, my mind, reflects that beautifully.

And now the girls are up and L is searching for a shirt for Y, and Y is giving me a big cuddle. Last night she was inconsolable, missing her Mama, and this morning, she came and told me what she was feeling and why. I love these forgiveness lessons: when I don’t take the crying and screaming personally; when I let her do what she needs to do; when I do my best not to interfere, she responds with all the love and forgiveness I tried giving her but felt I couldn’t. The mirror is clear, the projector clean.

So morning is upon us once again and this is supposed to be rushing, this is supposed to be a panic, and I can’t find it. The fire is warm, the armchair comfortable, kids in their element (L watching a video, Y in the bath), and that clock keeps ticking. Time appears to be running short, yet there is nothing to it. It twists and stretches and shrinks according to the situation. It is not a constant - it is just a concept we have made to help make things look constant. My experience suggests that time moves about all over the place. Give me any two events that were supposed to have happened exactly a year ago, say, and my memory will tell me that one happened considerably longer ago than the other. This is not my memory playing tricks on me, it is time being found out. Like the age-old adage – time flies when you’re having fun – it moves at a rate dependent on the experience, not the opposite. And yet every clock will try and tell you different: I am the arbiter of your experience. How much responsibility we attempt to hand over to our inventions: we make the clock and then let it run our lives; we invent the vehicle and then let it define our landscape; we make the computer and our lives get faster – no time left to smell the flowers. I love that I am trying only to take responsibility for this one: when the whole world is attempting to relinquish as much responsibility as it can; it is nice to be taking some back.