This Allman Brothers song was composed in the early 1970s by Gregg Allman, shortly after the death of his brother Duane. As I prepared to write this post, the song slipped into my mind and suggested itself as a way to introduce the topic of wasting time.
I had total recall of the opening piano sequence. The notes flow, one into the other, clear and smooth and evoking a cantering horse with the smoothest of gaits. I looked up the lyrics, which weren’t as clear in my memory. Here are two lines from the bridge: “You don’t need no gypsy to tell you why/Ya can’t let one precious day slip by.”
Precious days are made up of precious moments.
For most of my life, and particularly during my professional career, I’ve tried to be a good steward of time. Experience has taught that properly managing time, tasks, projects and teams, contributes to good results and satisfaction. Sloppy or inept management of time—particularly when that ineptitude ends up wasting other people’s time—contributes to resentment and frustration. For good or ill, I have a tendency to fiercely defend my personal and professional time.
This trait got even stronger after my transition from a salaried employee, to an hourly employee, to my current self-employed status. For example, high on the list of things that annoy me is the time-sucking job of “circling back.” I politely badger people to do their small but crucial part in some task with a screaming deadline. My inner project manager comes to a slow boil; “just put me out of my misery and answer my email/text!”
Throughout my years in mid-level management, and as caregiver and “case manager” for both of my elderly parents, I honed that ability to move things along, multi-task, sweat the big and small stuff, and banish “procrastinate” from my vocabulary. I still use those skills on a daily basis, but during the extraordinary moments, days, weeks and months of 2020, the pattern shifted.
First, and most profoundly, my years as my father’s caregiver came to an end with his death on March 2, 2020. In some ways, this transition felt familiar. Like my mother had done ten years earlier, my father took a multi-year journey from an active, independent life to that of a frail elder confined to a wheelchair. My parents’ physical, mental and social experiences couldn’t have been more different from each other. But for me, there was a common element: the ever-present, ever-growing, all-important to-do list. When that list suddenly shifted from a living, fluid document to an archive, my “doing” wheels fell right off the bus.
As I walked that lonely path of loss in the early days of the pandemic, my attitude toward time, and the efficient use thereof, began to evolve.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama said “Proper utilization of time is so important. While we have this body, and especially this amazing human brain, I think every minute is something precious.”
Proper use of time versus efficient use of time…there’s a subtle difference. I slowly separated from my territorial, judgmental “no one appreciates the value of my time” approach. So slowly, in fact, that reminders had to come along to help me see the change.
The hints range from small to monumental. A micro-hint had to do with my realizing that I don’t seem to get as angry about voluntarily (or willfully) wasting my own time as I do when I decide that someone else is to blame for the lost minute, hour, day. What does it matter? Precious time is gone in either case.
Monumental hints come in the daily events of this dire pandemic. Death is near to all, regardless of age or circumstance, touching us or veering close. The collective experience resembles the nautical term known as a “confused sea.” The waves are huge and green-black, randomly moving with no single, defined direction. There’s no time to react or plan; chaos rules. There is no choice but to try to stay alive. The mighty powers are at work—wind, time, death, love. I can breathe, wait and experience this moment; nothing else is certain or promised.
