Time Moves Too Quickly

but stories keep us

Hi friends,

It’s been a whirlwind of a month, as August always is. I was in Charlevoix, Michigan earlier this month, speaking to a small, beautiful community. We spent a few days exploring the four realms of resistance from my new book, Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day.

It’s really been a dream come true to hold spaces like this, and it’s why I created the four realms—it’s a helpful, accessible, cyclical framework that can be explored in community.

Side note—if you live in a space or community that hosts retreats, please contact my agent, Jim Chaffee! I’d love to come hold space with you and dive into the realms together.

In Michigan, I spent a few hours kayaking on Lake Charlevoix. There on the water, two things happened simultaneously: time stood still, and it beckoned me back to shore.

I was lost in the sights and sounds, the feeling of the sun on my shoulders and the lull of the waves, the family of deer watching me from the horizon, the open sky and open water.

But I’d rented that kayak, and I had only two hours with it, two hours to ask questions and pray and hope, to get scared and believe in myself over and over again.

Years ago I’d never imagine kayaking for two whole hours. I’d get bored, or scare myself back to shore before I could really challenge myself to go further. But that day, time stretched for me, cradled me, held me like a womb.

I returned to shore two hours later and the stories and life I’d experienced on those waters will never leave my body, my heart, my memory. Time is a guide, a constant, but so too are stories.

---

I’ve started journaling again in the mornings, something that I’ve leaned into a lot of my life, but especially during COVID. I started up a journal in early 2020, and I’m really grateful to have those words now, to remember the stories.

So as I journal, I struggle. Time doesn’t slow down, and it’s actually quite hilarious how this still hits us hard as humans. We forget how time works, or we want to get ahead of it, to stop it, to make it listen to reason, to make it listen to us.

But time is some sort of living, breathing thing. Even our western notions of time, which are linear and often oppressive, still hold us to something, still give us structure and weight. We cannot fight it, so what do we do?

I think we return to stories when time oppresses us, because stories, however old they are, ground us in time, the thing that does not stop and is always looping in and around us.

The other day I was shopping at Goodwill and a tiny, beautiful European woman approached me and told me stories from her life for a good 5-10 minutes. By the time we were done, I had tears in my eyes, clutching my new sweaters in hand, because human connection, real human connection driven through stories and sharing and gratitude, is so difficult to come by lately.

She kept pausing and saying and you are so young, thank you for listening.

I wanted to hug her close. I wanted to get her phone number and meet up for tea or coffee. I wanted to know more, to share more, to learn from her, to engage time in a way that challenges and encourages.

But I didn’t. I let that moment be what it was. I didn’t get her phone number, just her name, a name I’ll never forget: Farrah, just like Farrah Fawcett, she said with a twinkle in her eye.

Summer will keep going.

The kids go back to school in ten days.

The box of peaches a neighbor gave us from her tree (a peach tree right outside Philadelphia! It was a gorgeous site to behold) will go bad if we don’t peel and freeze them and devour the rest.

Work responsibilities for the fall season will pop up, as much as I try to push them away.

The house will beg to be cleaned.

The email inbox will scream to be tended to.

The dogs will need to be fed again.

I will get older one day at a time, and time, time,

will slip away and play with my heart and teach me lessons.

Time moves too quickly, but stories will keep us.

So keep telling the stories.

Photo by Alex Perez on Unsplash