[2020-10-19] Time
When I spoke recently with my friend who had had cancer 10 years ago, he told me that once he became sick, his life became all about time—how to reserve as much of it to spend with family and doing what he loved. So instead of climbing the corporate ladder, he started taking summers off. He considered resigning from the Public Service so that he would have more control over when and where he worked. Ultimately, he found a position that allowed him to work primarily from home, saving hours in commute time every week. Every moment saved was a moment he could spend with his family.
Time was also at the heart of a conversation I had a few years ago. A psychologist who was facilitating a retreat I attended asked us what was the number one reason people give for not being civil in the workplace. The answer was lack of time. When we're pressed for time, we don't take a moment to say good morning, we don't ask people how they're doing before launching into the business at hand, we don't pause to hold the door for the person behind us. As an executive, I used to remind myself to slow down—to take the extra few seconds needed to acknowledge a colleague, to take a moment late at night to send an email to an employee to congratulate them on a job well done, even if that meant 5 fewer minutes for me in bed, and to always address an email to my recipient by name, recalling what Dale Carnegie said: "Remember that a person’s name is to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language."
There's something about cancer's threat that makes time sweet and precious and something to hold onto, as if that were even possible. I don't look back at my life and regret squandering time. One of the advantages of being a workahollington (as my daughter once called me) is that I always got a lot done. Mostly, that was work, but it was also spending time with family, especially my daughter, writing every week in my blog Café Jen, and—more recently—being there for my mom and siblings after my brother passed away in 2019.
Though I've worked long hours for years, the balance between work and home was completely lost with the arrival of COVID, which stole even more time. From January to August, I worked almost non-stop, including weekends and nights—as did so many of my colleagues. In that period, I took two weeks of holidays and about four Sundays off. As the head of communications for Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada, it couldn't be any other way. I led an incredible team; we told ourselves that we were saving lives, and I have no doubt that we did. My team continues to do amazing work; I'm so proud of them. But I am keenly aware of how much I was complicit in stealing time from them and their families to support the cause of communicating to Canadians about the coronavirus and what they could do to lessen their risk of getting and transmitting it. It is my sincere hope that my team can one day return to a better balance between work and home. I often talk about the angels who are nurses. Well, communications professionals who serve the public are among the most dedicated employees I have ever had the privilege of working with.
So, I find myself today thinking about time.
I came across this beautiful poem by Liam Porter, an Irish writer who set himself a challenge in 2013 to publish a poem every day. This is one of them.
TAKE TIME
Take time for now.
This is the only moment you are sure of.
Take time for friends.
They will help you through the very worst days.
Take time for family.
You will miss them, immeasurably, when they are gone.
Take time for work.
But don’t let work, take all of your time.
Take time to laugh.
Laughter raises spirits and lifts the gloom.
Take time for music.
It will feed your soul and bring you joy.
Take time to exercise.
You have one body, you should look after it well.
Take time for you.
For if you keep dividing yourself, what will be left?
Take time to understand.
That we cannot save time. We can just try to use it wisely.
Take time to live.
Though I read this poem only today, I have been following its principles for weeks. I am working very hard to focus on this moment—not the treatments and tests and results to come. I am connecting with friends, old and new, that I would never have had time to connect with while working full time. I am spending time with family, even if that's largely virtually these days. I am blogging every day, which continues to feel like one of the most meaningful ways to spend a portion of my precious time. I have reached out to friends who love to share humorous stories and images and who don't take themselves too seriously. I listen to music as often as I can, something that has been a constant in my life. I am walking every day, hitting my goal of 10,000 steps in recent days as my body gets stronger and stronger—today, for example, I took separate walks with my son, husband and daughter. I am taking time for myself by baking (a favourite these days is Easy No Knead Skillet Bread and today I made Apple Crisp Bars with apples from my mom's orchard), reading books (currently Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed) and watching the occasional movie (I highly recommend Radha Blank's The Forty-Year-Old Version). I am taking time to understand and learn from my current circumstances through my daily reflections in Jenesis.
With every breath, I am taking time to live.
