Live an Hour...

Here we go again…

All the blog posts, this last while, seem to have been overly reflective and maybe even a bit sombre. This one may well turn out to be no exception. Sorry about that, I promise I’ll do one soon where I recount something stupid I did. Normal service will be resumed.

Meantime, I’ll try not to go too heavy on you this week.

Patricia said something the other evening and it got me thinking. I think Love Island was on the telly. I can’t say we were watching Love Island cos I tend to slink away whenever it comes on and Trish only seems to watch in on 80% fast forward anyway. But in the brief moment when we were both in the room and it was on, and not being fast-forwarded, one of the Ladies on in said something like, “I want to live every day as if it were my last.” It’s the type of cliché-ridden hyper-speak they tend to deal in at that sunny villa (in my admittedly limited experience). Anyway, that’s what she said, and Trish said something funny in reply.

She said, “How tiring would that be?”

Well, exactly. How bloody tiring – exhausting - would it be?

It’s the type of sentiment that trots easily off the tongue, perhaps after you’ve finished telling people how you really like travel and meeting people. But think about it. Live every day as if it were your last? Jesus.

Imagine the level of tension, for a start. All your affairs would have to be put in order and solemn adieus would have to be said. There’d be sadness and regret and you probably wouldn’t manage any dinner. Who on earth would want that? Nobody, that’s who. It’s just something stupid you say when you disengage your brain and let your mouth run downhill for a while.

But wait.

Nobody would want to live every day as if it were their last. You’d be a silly bugger if you did.

But what if you occasionally decided to take a single day and live it as if it might be your last? Or, if that’s too much to countenance, perhaps consider taking an hour. Why not take one single hour and look at your world as if you would never be able to look at it ever again? That might be do-able. It might also be an interesting exercise to take on.

I remember Dennis Potter. I remember him for lots of reasons but, at this moment, I am thinking specifically of his last interview, given to Melvyn Bragg in 1994. Perhaps you remember it. I know many people who do. It was quite remarkable. Sipping occasionally from a hip flask that reportedly contained a cocktail of morphine and champagne, he spoke about many things. I remember him speaking about how he perceived things now that his time on Earth was clearly drawing to a close. How everything was heightened and hyper-clear. The flowers in the garden, the birds, the insects. All were vivid and precious to him and he appreciated them in a way he never had before, simply because soon he would not be able to.

So, yeah, take an hour. Look around like you’re on your way out. What would that be like?

There’s an irony to this piece and here it is. I’m too busy right now to do this. Funny, eh? It’s true but it’s silly and contrary-to-all-logic too. If a person can’t take an hour for something, what the hell is wrong with them anyway? Perhaps it’s still useful to have a statement of intent, an acknowledgement that some stopping and looking around would be useful sometime. I’ll tell myself that anyway. It’s at least something by way of an excuse.

So I didn’t have an hour to pretend I was on my way out but I did do something.

I did five minutes.

I went out in the back garden/back yard/whatever you want to call it. I’m nobody’s idea of a gardener so it’s not the most inviting of spaces. The old trampoline is now overgrown with creepers and the colourful weeds grow up boldly between the cracks in the paving. But the bees like the yellow flowers and the cat likes to lie up on the trampoline and stalk birds and she makes it a little more pretty by being on it. So it may not be material for a Friday night BBC2 gardening show but it’s a peaceful corner and I like it.

I took five minutes in my slightly overgrown back yard and imagined I wouldn’t ever get to see any of it again.

And what happened?

Well, I have nothing tangible to report. The world did not reveal itself to me in any strange and novel ways. Nothing earth-shattering. But I can confirm something you doubtless already know. It is possible to just appreciate what you have a little bit more by stopping and immersing yourself in it. You can come to be reminded that, though there may be a list of things I don’t have or, most likely, will never have, still the list of things I have is so much longer and so much better and so much more essential.

In the back yard there was some sunshine and the sound of neighbour-kids hooting in the distance. I filled the little terracotta dish with cold water and placed it on the upturned flowerpot and the swifts came and splashed around violently in it. The weeds may be overgrown but they are attractive all the same. The tiny, grassed area is not really grass anymore. It’s a combination of moss and dock leaves and lord-knows-what. But it’s greener than green and it waves a tiny bit in the breeze.

It was just a nice five minutes. That’s all I got.

And good luck to that lady on Love Island who will now live every day as if it were her last. She will doubtless be bombarded with sensual input and tiny gifts from the natural world.

And, hopefully, she doesn’t get mugged off by too many of the boys.