This is how I’ve managed to do it. With a kitchen timer. Thirty minutes writing cards to family and friends (last time I did that was…too long ago to remember.) Thirty minutes reading: Somewhere Towards The End by Diana Athill. Wonderfully readable and frank book reflecting on a well lived life now moving towards her aging, her old-age. Then thirty minutes writing cards…and so on.
I recommend the kitchen timer for discipline and the book for insight into old age and death. And also recommended is the effort to write those cards to family and friends.
Back in 1994 an immigration officer at the American Embassy gave me unsolicited advice as he granted me my visa. Don’t visit your mother once, come back regularly. I hadn’t thought about her death ’till then. She died a year later. That’s thirteen years ago come Thursday. She’d have been one hundred this year, had she lived on.
Perhaps the cards are a recognition of age. Mine. Theirs. And our passing out of existence.
Wise advice from your immigration officer and very relevant for me, I must heed it before it is too late. Each year I begin December with good intentions and find the last day for posting comes and I’ve barely begun. So, your post reminds me it’s the 10th tomorrow!
Following the Diana Athill link, I noticed that she is reading A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland. By coincidence, I’d read a review of the same book a few weeks back. The eremite life is not without risk.
It’s wet and surprisingly cool for one degree north of the equator. I’m coming back for a week or so to enjoy the cold and short days (odd as that may sound).
Thanks for making time to post, kitchen timer or no!
In gassho
Walter
Someone else I know runs her life on the timer. That darn thing lives on the back of the classroom white board and is in charge of everything in the house from reciting verb tables to recorder practice to filling the bath.
It also gets used for timing meditation too but only when buried under at least three cushions in the farthest corner of the kitchen.