“Aren’t you ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnants of your life and to dedicate to wisdom only that time can’t be directed to business.” ~ Senica

Time is an elusive idea. There are days where it seems there is not enough of it and moments where it can’t go fast enough. Grief has an amazing way of messing with time and the mind. Time also has a way of helping an individual look more closely at the ways that time is spent. 

During the process of my grief I found that my mind followed the physical location of my body. When at work my mind felt the only place that it had the energy to be was at work. While it wanted to drift off it came rushing back to preserve energy. Then when I finally put myself outside my mind felt the vastness of nature. While on a hike, standing in a river, being in the mountains, breathing in the crispness of the winter air my mind felt the freedom to adventure where it needed to go. Sometimes that was experiencing my loss, while other times just letting my mind roam. 

I quickly came to the realization that the most productive hours of our lives are spent at work. Maybe that isn’t a fair judgment on work. Maybe time is spent doing things that are thought to be important and not what our soul or mind needs. Loss has a way of stripping that from the mind. All of sudden the body and mind can be so fatigued that there is nothing left to give to the aspects of life that keep it healthy. 

When I realized this, nothing in my life was being spent in the way that I desired. My family was getting very little focused time. I say that because maybe we were in the same room or doing an activity together but I wasn’t present. There was a lifelessness happening that I didn’t realize and no one else knew about. My grief and pain were killing me. A lot of that might have to do with the fatigue of the day. It took everything to be present in my job, to not break down. The brain and body only have so much to give towards the fight, and the fight goes towards providing and taking care of a family or spouse. 

It’s important to say that giving yourself more than the leftovers doesn’t take anything from work, family or what you are going through, at least not in my experience. Taking the time to do something that replenished my mind and body would infuse something besides pain and darkness into my soul. Time also provided opportunities to pursue something of interest. Nature! Thank God for nature!

People deserve more than they allow time for. You deserve more time to put towards grief and the journey you are on. Having the ability to process loss with a perspective that it is a journey and not just an isolated event to get over can change the course of the journey. Once loss happens life is not the same. Therefore the structure of our day and our lives need to be different. Loss does not always need to be circulating through the mind or topic of discussion. It does seem to be important to give the mind and body the freedom to process the loss. This becomes very difficult when all that is given is the leftover fatigued end of the day time. Allow yourself, even if it is a little more time than the previous day, to focus on an aspect of life when energy levels are high. Take a look at the natural world around you while there is energy and it will make a difference.