Time, abundance, and breaking free from the fear of death

While working as a bedside nurse in the hospital, I’ve cared for many folks in their dying time. Many times I have heard their doctors ask them if they want more time. This question preempts enrollment in a track of medical interventions: chemo, surgeries, medications and therapies of all kinds. These interventions can often spiral and compound. Before you know it, your quest for more time can become a full time job. This leaves little time or energy for all your unfulfilled dreams and longings.

Rarely have I seen a doctor ask a dying person, 

“For what do you want more time? 

What do you want more time to look like? 

What is the quality of time you want? 

How do you want to spend that time? and 

What do you want to feel like while you’re spending it?” 

In absence of these questions, more time can often look like more time spent in existential dread. More time desperate for a miracle. 

Not to knock the docs. They often believe wholeheartedly in the ethos, “if we can, we should,” with little regard for quality of life outcomes. When all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail. 

The truth is, in capitalism, most of us are living on someone else’s time clock. When we finally get some “down time” on the weekends or evenings, we’re playing catch up on the tasks we must accomplish to sustain our ability to show up well at work. Time often escapes us. It doesn’t feel like it’s ours to spend. It’s no wonder that so many of us find ourselves reflecting at the end of our lives, “where did all my time go?”

I’ve seen people right up to their nineties terrified of the powerlessness they feel around death, the ultimate time clock. When I talk with my clients about this, there is a sense that much of their time has been wasted and no amount more will ever be enough. 

Time scarcity is a nagging, restless, insatiably hungry ghost. We can feed it and feed it and it never gets full. For, time spent living in fear of the absence of more time is precious time lost. Time not spent enjoying the fruits of your life’s labor. Time not spent reflecting on days gone by with dear friends and kin. Time not spent making sense of the wounds and wisdom of your lineage. Time not spent mentoring future generations and cultivating your legacy.

No matter how you dream of spending your time, in the words of Ram Dass, you have to be here now to do it. 

What if there is another way to relate to time and the resources we need to survive? What if you could simplify your life in order to focus on your legacy, to spend the time you have left in ways that matter to you while enhancing your sense of fulfillment by investing in future generations? What might be possible?

Many of us are familiar with the notion of healing our scarcity wounds around money by developing a mindset of abundance. But what about time scarcity within violent, extractive systems of racialized, capitalist patriarchy? 

There are tools to tend to the wounds of scarcity that include compassionate awareness and accurate assessment of what you have, be it time or money. We can choose to take our time back and get clear on what abundant time and resource really looks like for us. Recently, I heard someone describe abundance as the capacity to perceive beauty. 

There are no individual solutions to the many, complex, and converging issues of our time. No single person’s choices will solve climate collapse or the legacy of colonization. These converging crises are systemic in nature. All life will ultimately end in death. However, our individual choices can make our lives better. By incrementally increasing our wellbeing through owning our personal power, we can better support the thriving of our relationships and communities. 

By getting intentional about our legacy and footprint, our hopeful actions can ripple out into the future, our healing can ripple backwards through the timeline of our lineages. We can learn from the Haudenosaunee first nations people who are guided by the seventh generation principle: our actions today should be assessed for how they will impact those who are not yet born but who will inherit the world. This is where our collective power thrives. This is how we become embodied agents of change.