Skip to main content

Enough Time





Newgrange  48x42" oil/cold wax on panel ©2011 Janice Mason Steeves

It is not enough if you are busy.
The question is, ‘what are you busy about?’

~Henry David Thoreau



How can one person do it all?  I have taken classes on getting organized.  I set schedules and goals.  I have no TV.  But I feel that I'm constantly playing catch-up in my life: finding enough studio time, trying to catch-up on my art inventory, organizing my art classes, writing grant proposals, meeting art exhibition deadlines, donating to art auctions, writing blog posts, aiming to keep up on facebook, as well as walking my puppy, exercising, housecleaning and family life.  And occasionally meditating.


 I was brought abruptly to my senses last night though when a dear old friend called to chat. We talk now and again but not regularly.  We've known each other since our now grown children were in Grade One. In the spring, she told me she was having very serious worries about one of her children who had recently confessed to having a drug addiction.  We talked for a long time.  


And then days began to pass.   My busy, often chaotic life took all my attention.  I wasn't sure how to follow up with my friend, and I soon got so far into my own world, that I simply forgot to call her.  I didn't call to see how she and her family were coping with this life-threatening problem. Last night she called to chat and the conversation turned to her hurt at my not calling to check on her.  She had gone through months of hell because she was so worried.  I'm embarrassed to confess this.  It wasn't intentional.  It just happened. And I feel simply awful.


I don't have all the good answers that I see on other blogs and newsletters, where point by point, you can see the way to being a better person.  I'm sick of them actually.  Life isn't point by point.


Sometimes we make mistakes and we're brought face to face with our weaknesses.  


Sometimes we need to step back, take the time to reflect and turn off the noise.  I came across Pico Iyer's article "The Joy of Quiet"  recently in the NY Times.

"The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And — as he might also have said — we’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines.
So what to do? The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don’t show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen."  
[Some] friends try to go on long walks every Sunday, or to “forget” their cellphones at home. A series of tests in recent years has shown..... that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.” More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are “inherently slow.” The very ones our high-speed lives have little time for."
Slowing down is the key, not working harder, longer and faster.  Walks in the woods with my puppy and grandkids.  Visits with friends. 





Comments

  1. I felt a deep exhale as I read your well thought out words, Janice. Sitting alone in that quiet room. Yes. That's where the well is refilled. Thank you for a lovely post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Judy, many thanks for this. I found it difficult to write.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Janice, I appreciate that you wrote this without having any answers or excuses. Just being aware of what happened and acknowledging it is all one can do. Sally

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for your honesty--and the Pico Iyer essay.

    I crave quiet. Yoga saves my sanity (altho some might disagree). Showing up for it enables me consciousness of the challenging fact that limits are part of the human condition. Limits of time, body, mind. I love going for stretches in aspects of my life-- but can't do them all. I've got to select and let others go. Boo hoo!

    ReplyDelete
  5. You're brave, Janice, to admit what many of us (most of us?) feel, especially at the cusp of a new year......

    As a follower of Jesus, your words translate immediately to the importance of prayer in my life. The time apart for "centering" means the rest of the day goes much better!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks Kathie, I appreciate your comments.

    ReplyDelete
  7. So right Sandra. Limits. Yes. I wrote about those too in another post where I talked about the stone walls on The Aran Islands. They represented physical limits but expanded to limits in all ways. Choices and limits. Thanks for your words.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Yes, as always your writing resonates your truth-I tensed with apprehension as i read your build up of responsibilities and time-nappers. But you stopped -a lot of us sadly don't know how. Why is it so difficult to be silent? To not feel guilty for relishing in the quiet?

    One thing I would like to say-sometimes we need to be aware of all we HAVE accomplished. In your case your work, your writing and your journey benefit so many-so thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Jan, what a kind response. Yes, thanks for that thought about what we have accomplished. Good to take time to reflect on that too.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Meet the Owners of a Scottish Castle

Anne Tristine Nguyen, Ali Orr Ewing, their children, Ava, Atticus and  their dog, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Dunskey Estate, Portpatrick, Scotland Anne Tristine Nguyen and her husband, Alistair Orr Ewing are the owners of Dunskey Estate near Portpatrick, Scotland where I will teach a painting workshop in September. Dunskey is a splendid Edwardian castle on 2000 acres of ocean-front land with miles of walking trails. As well as daily workshop sessions in the studio on the top floor of the castle, our small group of artists will enjoy breathtaking hikes, superb accommodation and fabulous meals.  Not having met owners of a castle before, I asked Anne if I could interview her to hear a little of their background story and that of the castle. Can you tell me a little of your personal story and that of your husband, Alistair Orr Ewing? Anne emigrated to America when she was ten years old, but it was at an art gallery in Saigon, her birthplace, where she met Al

The Importance of Silence in Art

Gathering Light 60x60"  Oil on canvas © 2014 Janice Mason Steeves  Michael David Rosenberg, the musician known as Passenger, sings, "See all I need is a whisper in a world that only shouts." In the workshops I teach, I find that one of the most common problems with paintings is that they shout. Most have too much going on: too many small shapes, too much texture, extremes of colour, too many lines, too much, too much. One thing I say most often as I walk around the classroom working with students individually, is 'make bigger shapes'.  But not only bigger shapes. Quiet shapes.  Where can your eye go and rest in the painting? That isn't a consideration in much of contemporary painting or much of contemporary life.  Ours is a noisy world both visually and auditorily.  Ours is a world that shouts.  People are afraid of silence. I wrote a blog post  3 years ago about planning a retreat in my own home, where I shut off the computer and the phon

Lessons that Stone Walls Teach

Dry stone wall in the Burren, Co. Clare, Ireland   I've just returned from teaching a Workshop in Wild Places class in the Burren in County Clare, Ireland. Writing this post, I'm reminded of another post I wrote after visiting Inishmaan, the middle of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland several years ago. Stone walls crisscrossed the island in tight webs like a fisherman's net. I wrote then that the web of stone walls made me think of the idea of putting limitations on our painting as a way of exploring more deeply and how walls give limits against the limitless. You can read that article   here. As our group hiked in the Burren with our guide, Marie McGauran we learned that the walls are stronger because of the holes in them. The wind can pass through. The oldest stone walls, estimated to be 3500 years old are at Skara Brae, a Neolithic site in Orkney. Most walls were built in the 18th and 19th century, marking areas of private ownership and resulting in poverty