when wringing every moment out of the day still isn’t enough
time management, FOMO, and having a better relationship with my limits
Every few months, I get to write for Faith & Leadership, an online learning resource that my workplace publishes. Today this little essay went out into the world!
I like Mary Oliver. I really do. But that quote of hers is everywhere: posters, Pinterest boards, greeting cards, pillows. And it stresses me out.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
These are the last two lines of Oliver’s “The Summer Day,” which is a nice poem (really!). But this quote, taken out of its context and hand-lettered on a motivational journal, bothers me. I read it and want to rub my temples, roll my eyes.
I’ll tell you, what it is I plan to do:
Everything! Nothing! I DON’T KNOW!
I understand that her quote can be read in an inspirational, carpe-some-diem way. But when I encounter Oliver’s words in the wild, they remind me of the world’s infinite possibilities and the fact that I have one — one! — life in which to explore only a few of them. Then an existential fear of missing out sets in while the careers I’ll never have and the countries I’ll never live in all flash before my eyes.
When these brushes with my own limitedness take place, the temptation for me (and I suspect for many others) is to try to wring purpose and productivity out of every second — and when that inevitably does not happen, to feel guilty and try the wringing again.
I’m grateful, though, to have run into a few helpful companions for figuring out a better relationship with time: how we might move from mindsets of mastery and control to something more like acceptance, amicability and openness.