Lessons in Time: Insights from ‘A Tale for the Time Being’
I’m running out of time, I tell myself while checking the number of days left before Christmas.
Simplify seems a wise approach. So I decide to cut back on the decorating and gifts. Maybe I won’t send out so many cards. The sense of urgency, however, is contagious.
The Ideal is to Relax and Savor the Season, But everyone appears to be a hurry.
Traffic is heavy. Stores are crowded. I rush to finish tasks before the end of the year. I remind myself to slow down and pace things out. If I send someone a Valentine’s Day card instead of a Christmas card, isn’t it more meaningful because it’s not part of an onslaught of cards?
I take an early morning walk when then world is quiet and time expands. What is time anyway?
I just finished listening to a really good novel last week, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. It was read by the author herself, and she did a magnificent job of articulating the characters’ personalities in her voice inflections. The book was one of those books that are so enjoyable, you just don’t want it to end.
One of the reasons highly recommend it, is that it indirectly explores the nature of time and our existence with storylines that interact with one another in a surprising way. A writer named Ruth discovers a freezer bag that washes ashore on the remote island where she lives. The sealed bag contains a diary written in English by a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl and a journal written in French and a packet of letters written in Japanese. How do the time lines of these various writers intersect?
A time being, explains Nao the teenage girl who is writing in her diary, “is someone who lives in time.” From concerns about remembering and forgetting the past, to our agency in changing the future, the novel explores a myriad of themes. Japan’s role in World War II, the global influence of the Dot-com industry, earth’s fragile ecosystem are just some of the historic and current events that impact the family relationships of the characters.
I do not profess to be a Buddhist scholar, but my understanding is that Buddhism teaches one to center into the present moment and to see past and future as inconsequential. From her great-grandmother Jiko, a Zen Buddhist nun, Nao learns how to achieve spiritual strength when faced with adversity. Through her interactions with the items in the freezer bag, the writer Ruth learns she has more agency in her own life than she previously thought.
Back to my own life, I think about the story and reflect on ways to better savor each moment. Taking time to read, write, and reflect is an important part of my day, regardless of the “chores” I need to check off my list.
I look out the window at the twinkling lights that sparkle on this cold winter’s night. The evergreens smell good and the mail carrier delivers a card from someone we haven’t heard from for a while. We have shelter and food to eat. In the present moment, all is well.
THANK YOU for reading. You can follow me and subscribe for FREE but if you’d like to support my writing, please buy my two newest books. I have a chapbook filled with short prose, short essays and poems RECIPES FROM MY GARDEN and a children’s book WHO IS SANTA?
Either one makes a great holiday gift. The monies raised from the Santa book is being donated towards research a rare children’s cancer related to the Dicer gene. If you buy one or both of my books, you are indirectly supporting the writer’s community.
If you have a favorite book that contemplates our relationship with time, I’d love to hear about it.
Originally published at http://nadjamaril.com on December 10, 2024.
