Oh my goodness, this weekend was just crazy. Special, but crazy. With my eldest’s matric farewell and the matric parents organising it, I hardly got any time to myself — let alone time to write my next newsletter. Yesterday morning, when I told Lauren, who came to help me with strength training, that I hadn’t even started writing my letter yet, and that usually by a Monday I am basically done with it, she said, “Luckily you have so much news, there must be lots to write about.”
And I thought, No. I have nothing that I actually want to write about.
It wasn’t that nothing had happened. Quite the opposite. Plenty was going on. But I couldn’t think of anything that had made me stop for a moment and think: Why did I just do that? What is that trying to teach me? Why did that just happen? Or even, Wow, who would’ve thought that?
I have, however, been racking my brain trying to think of a nice speech for my daughter, which has also not gotten anywhere yet. And I think the two things are probably more connected than I initially realised.
Being reflective and introspective is something that has served me so well over the past few years. There is something quite powerful about taking the time to stop and think about what is happening in your life instead of simply moving from one thing to the next. Sometimes you discover something about yourself. Sometimes you understand a situation differently. Sometimes you realise that you reacted to something in a way you don’t particularly like. And sometimes you just have one of those wow, I never thought about it like that before moments.
But after an entire weekend of rushing from point A to point B and getting hardly any time to myself, and then, when I did have a bit of time, spending it either scrolling, trying to catch up with my husband, or doing something mindless like watching TV, I realised something: none of those activities is bad, but writing, being reflective and introspective, is not something that is going to happen just like that by itself. You have to make space for it. And, if I’m honest, you have to be a little bit selfish about that space.
One of my pet peeves is when people remark something along the lines of, “You’re so lucky to get time to run,” or “You’re so lucky that you have time to write.” Luck has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Taking the time, planning the plans, being consistent, showing up — that is what it’s all about.
I don’t have more hours in my day than anyone else. There are still children who need lifts, meals that need cooking, cleaning that needs doing, work that needs to be done, and a husband I’d actually like to spend some time with. There are always things that could fill the time. There will always be something else I could be doing.
I think I’ve somehow started to believe that because reflection has become such a natural and important part of my life, it will just happen automatically. That if I am reflective, I will naturally notice things, think about them and eventually write about them.
But this weekend reminded me that it doesn’t work that way.
While I was looking for some profound little moment from the past two weeks that I could turn into a lesson or a story, the universe laughed and presented me with something much more ordinary: the stories come when you take the time to stop and think, not when you’re too busy doing everything else.
Reflection needs space too.