Some people say that time is a human construct, but I find myself questioning this. The way I see it everything has always moved in this fluid circular loop and we just put numbers to. The sun and moon circling the solar system are reduced to numeric values that take the form of hands ticking around a clock. Is the loop of time not a symbol of existence? Everything is spinning, everything is moving, everything is fluid. Think about it for too long and the dizziness will tip you right out of your chair.
So how do we stay standing in a world that is moving so damn fast?
We tap into this super power of time manipulation, the closest thing we have to a pause button: gratitude.
Think of gratitude in tangent with a clock.
At the top, we have our 12 o’clock moments. These are the moments where everything is pointing up, when gratitude comes easy. Life is handing us all the best cards; we are mentally strong, physically healthy, financially stable, fueled by community, faith, passions and purpose. It is the time when we pause and thank the universe for being on our side.
At the bottom, we have our 6 o’clock moments. The moments where our last instinctual feeling is gratitude. Moments of darkness, confusion, anxiety, self-doubt, pain, loss. But the world keeps relentlessly spinning; the hands on the clock keep ticking away. We must understand that the clock will never pause in the 6 o’clock moments, nor will it pause in the 12 o’clock moments. That is where the challenge of gratitude lies; to appreciate the moments at the bottom in the same way we appreciate the top, to understand we cannot have the 12 o’clock moments without the 6 o’clock ones. To know and trust that everything that happens to us continues to shape our story, rather than define it. The confusion, pain, and darkness are as intertwined with clarity, hope, and happiness in guiding us around the clock. This is not to make light of the depths of pain and emotion we will feel in our life. It is essential to feel them fully, and to sit in discomfort and be able to whisper “thank you”, knowing that within the depths of the 6 o’clock moments, the 12 o’clock moments are always t.
Let's unpack this with the most basic, mundane topic of conversation: the weather.
There are beaming hot days when you wish the clouds would block the radiant rays of the sun from boiling your insides. The clouds will not come rushing in at your request. You will instead find a tree and appreciate the lanky, stout trunk that is providing you shade. There are gloomy, dark days when you wish for the clouds to disperse, but in the stillness of the rain you will find yourself admiring the droplets dancing down the leaves in the greenery outside your window and understand their essentiality. Maybe you will go out and join the showers as you twirl around barefoot, alone, and drenched. Or maybe, instead, your eyes will mirror the clouds and release droplets of their own, sitting in the discomfort of forced stillness facing what you have been burying in the distractions of a rushed life. Maybe you will do both, dancing and crying in the clouds you once wished would break but now you give gratitude to.
But life is more than the weather.
So, let's dive into the most raw, dire reality of existence: death.
The inevitable consequence to life is knowing that nothing is permanent. Not our finicky house plant, our four-legged furry soul mate, our best friend, our parents, ourselves. There is nothing we can do about the truth that everything is temporary. How beautiful is it that instead of crawling into a dark hole and avoiding any kind of attachment in attempts to avoid this inevitable pain, we love? We laugh and we cry and we fight and we hurt and we forgive and we admire and we create and we love. When loss enters that list, we fall. The pain of death is the most human emotion we are capable of, something so deep that we often aren’t able to feel it at once. Instead, we go numb until we are ready to process. When we find the courage to begin mourning, it comes in small doses. Eventually, there is a point far down the line of the grieving process when gratitude creeps into our nostalgic minds, which previously has spent more time living in memories than reality. With gratitude present, the recollections get brighter, happier, less painful. The darkness lifts. We enter back into reality. We don’t forget, we adapt to existing in parallel with the loss. The love takes a new form. We start to see just how much our lives were shaped from what is no longer there. We lean on gratitude to pull ourselves out of the dark hole we fell into and we learn to live again, to love, laugh, and cry. Gratitude is how we acknowledge what we have, or what we had, and it is understanding how to honor and cherish what was while moving forward to what will be.
To practice gratitude is not to eliminate 6 o’clock. If anything, practicing gratitude is to become more conscious and resilient during the 6 o’clock moments. Life does not become easier because you learn how to appreciate what is around you; it becomes fuller, deeper. From the weather to death, it is a practice of trust and acceptance of it all. The world will never stop spinning just as the clock will never stop going around. A pause button does not exist.
But there is always gratitude.
To slow down, whisper “thank you”, and let the hands of the clock continue to spin with purpose.
a.m.p.
inspired by Diana & Alex Galvin
Comments