Borrowed Time

.. but who from?

I heard a phrase last night, one that’s used round here to describe the week or so at the start of April; ‘the borrowed days’.

It refers to the wild, ‘bad’, weather which seems to come along this time of year. We expect - when April comes - that the bitter, cold months, the endless dark, are finally behind us. Then comes a blast of wet, windy, dull weather which dulls even the light of midday. March, unwilling to give up its grip, borrows some days from April.

We’re expecting that this weekend. Storms are promised. Strong winds and rain. Perhaps even snow. Winter, like an unreconciled old man, raging against its dying.

It made me wonder about ‘borrowed time’.

I wonder if, for years, I borrowed time from my future, doing to my health things that have reduced the time I’ll have on earth.

Did I obsessively prioritise one part of my ‘self’ over all possible others? Borrowing who I am from who I could have been?

Do we do all do that? Borrow from the future (or from possible futures) to serve the present?

Last night I dreamed about directing a large ensemble show. I haven’t directed since the pandemic, and in my dream I found that, though my skills and weaknesses were intact after all this time, the work was an obligation, not a joy. I did the job and applied my skills, but my joy in the process had gone.

Is that a definition of borrowed time? That one is filling ones days only with obligation, hoping it will make some future time ‘better’? Is that the present borrowing from the future?

Yesterday I had a cardiac stress test - wired up to machines and walking on a treadmill, watching my blood pressure rise and my pulse accelerate. My heart seems to be doing well enough, considering it’s not the healthiest of hearts.

I had a heart attack a few years ago, and were I not in a functioning (if struggling) heath care system, living in the era of modern medicine, then probably I’d be dead by now.

Am I on borrowed time?

If I am, who or what am I borrowing from?

Must I pay interest?

When do I pay everything back?

Questions without answers. That’s OK. Not all questions need answers. Some just stimulate curiosity and provoke a refocusing.

What I come to realise - only for myself, I don’t presume to speak for anyone else - is that ‘borrowed time’ is time not spent with intention or reward.

Work is not time ‘borrowed’ from leisure, if the work serves an intention, or yields a soul-reward.

The present is not borrowed from the future if it is fully lived.

The present is not borrowed from the past if lived with full-spectrum engagement and joy.

Aspects of my ‘self’ are not borrowed from my potential if they are nurtured consciously and make me feel more, and more richly, alive and connected to this fleeting world.

Dreaming of directing a play I realised I was not enjoying it because, in the dream, I wanted to be doing something else.

There was no good intention. No intrinsic reward. No point.

I was borrowing time from myself, building up a debt that could never be repaid. Borrowing from what could be to do something with no point.

Waking, I decide to spend today doing things that have meaning.

I send you my warmest wishes

John