Jam tomorrow?

Procrastination is the thief of time. 

Except...

No, it isn’t. 

Time isn’t something that can be collected, stored, wasted, saved or spent - despite our insistence on describing it using words as if it were. You wouldn’t say “I’ve run out of up.” Or “I wish there were more left to right inches in the day”. Nor even, perhaps, quote “Forwards and backwards waits for no man.”

Twenty years ago, I wrote a short poem. I thought I was dying.

I ran out of time today.

I didn’t have much, anyway.

That was two years after a medic told me I had an incurable, ultimately terminal cancer. Leukaemia. 

After a year I had become clinically, deathfully depressed.

After two years I stumbled into two people who changed how I think.

After twenty-two years I’m as fit as a somewhat scuffed and slightly out-of-tune fiddle and as happy as your friend Larry.

I met a professor of psychology - he taught me a) acceptance of what I cannot affect and b) what I can do about what is going on for me, right now. Using nothing more than my imagination and a cassette player.

I met and worked with a coach/counsellor of extraordinary skill and presence. She taught me to understand how I had come to choose leukaemia. (Oh, she stopped the depression in six weeks along the way.)

The lesson I learned was - is - that I didn't have to sort this on my own. In fact, I couldn't. No one can. We need help, a guide, someone who can help us to be who we already are.

And from my experience, since 2001, I've been finding more and more ways to be a ferry for others to find their way across the river. I'm much better at it now than I was back then. That's kind of the way it goes. And there are many people, contacts, and connections along the way who are part of my better ferry service today. I thank them all.

I don't expect to die tomorrow although I know that could happen before you reach the end of this article. Or before I do.

I compromise - I have a working span of eight years left. I get the full eight each day, at the moment. That’s enough to make good plans, and allow them to change, merge, emerge, to enjoy all the doing. But not enough to sacrifice my being to some ideal never to be attained.

And time? I have the same moment each moment as I had all those years ago. As I have ever had. Or will have. 

It’s just a question of what I choose to do with each moment.

What do you choose? Right now?

And do let us have a coffee (or tea) and a chat - when you have time, of course.