With incurable cancer, time matters.
Living with this sort of diagnosis alters your perception of and relationship to time. It means a confrontation with death and no one wants that.
From the moment you get the news and thereafter, time is diffracted and re-assembled, reimagined, obsessed over, pined after, used, abused, wasted, played with and consumed like there’s no tomorrow…because there might not be one.
Cancer is a spanner in the works and the ultimate disruptor of continuous clock and calendar time.
From having too much time on our hands and killing time, time is killing us and we desperately grasp for more.
Where once we had some spare time, now time is driving us spare. We want the match to go to extra time so we can savour time and enjoy more ‘me’ time and ‘we’ time.
You want to make up for lost time and let the good times roll again but the sands of time aren’t having any of it.
We are told we are living on borrowed time so we tell others to carpe the diem out of life but sometimes we are too tired to do it ourselves.
Time is not on our side so time is of the essence. But if time is a thief how can it also be a great healer? There is no time like the present but time is a present we cannot buy.
Past, present and future merge into one and time accelerates, it feels ‘thick’ and heavy but it also stands so incredibly still and weightless. Time appears frozen but it’s not of our choosing.
You realise that a timeline is never a horizontal line or a flat circle but a tangled knotted ball of fishing wire.
It’s at this point that you realise, it’s time for a cup of tea and order is restored…until that biscuit reminds you its crunch time!
It feels like you are out of time so taking a ‘time out’ feels wrong. Now it’s a race against time so you look for a 24 hour course in time-bending to buy you more time.
You haven’t got time for ‘waiting times’, this precious resource needs handling with care and positive energy.
Time looms large but you haven’t the time to live it all in one day. So, you start to appropriate time, and prioritise how and with whom you want to spend time with.
But making every day matter is a lot of pressure and you can’t live every day as your last because it’s exhausting.
This is the time to listen your body clock and slow your roll like Neo in the Matrix, it’s bullet time and you call the shots.
It’s all a frame of mind.
Time moves in different directions, stands still, floats and evaporates, all at the same time.
You aren’t out of time because there is no time. It’s all made up.
John these blogs are amazing and a real stop you dead in your tracks read. The one about time is nothing short of incredible and you really need to publish it. I hope you have tons of time left as we love reading your daily thoughts. All the best and thanks for still making us all smile x x x
Thank you so much for your lovely comments Karen, it is very much appreciated.