A grayscale, blurry photo of people rushing at a station in Japan

Poem | No Time

I don’t know about you, but I never feel I have enough time.

I’ve become fixated with the idea of taking enough time to stand still and take stock of something. Whether I’m spending time with family, or spending the afternoon finally doing that thing I love after months of being too busy, I feel as if moments keep slipping away from me because there’s always something else to think about, or somewhere else to be. 

It feels almost impossible to take a few minutes to really soak things up and appreciate something.

I keep coming back to this classic poem by W H Davies titled Leisure, which opens with: ‘What is this life if, full of care / We have no time to stand and stare.’

He has a point, and I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiment – but in modern life it’s ever more difficult to take those moments Davies speaks of.

I felt compelled to write a response – so here it is!

 

No Time (after 'Leisure' by William Henry Davies) By Jo Fisher No matter if you live with care, there's little time to stand and stare. No time to stop and soak it in when you find your patience running thin. No time to revel in what you’ve done, when days and weeks bleed into one. When you’re so intent on taking stock but the feeling part of your heart is blocked. There is no space for everything within your mind and in this thing called life; there is no way to be completely present, open, free. The every day – this moment here – is overcome by loss, and fear of losing what’s not gone just yet. There is no time. There is regret. But it’s not because you didn’t care, enough to stop, and stand, and stare.

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