I have forgotten to turn off the autopilot mode of thoughtlessness

I don't know when it happened, but as I look out of my window onto the world, I now see myself slowly chugging down a siding whose rails reach an ominous stop, somewhere out of view.

What happened? I used to whizz along, stopping at the odd station to gather up fresh ideas; energized by the textures and colors and barely visible signs of potential growth all around me. When did the points change to send me monotonously chugging towards a dead end? Who pushed the lever?

I used to journey through life, living every moment. I dreamed of marriage and found my bashert. Longed to have children and was blessed with child after child. I took on projects and did my bit, gave where I could, turned out meal after meal, and just managed to win the race against the ever-filling washing basket.

This chugging self feels breathless at the thought of it. “Relax,” it says, “Slow down. Do something for yourself for once. Enjoy life.”

“But where are you taking me? What has happened to all the excitement, the freshness, the growth?”

Is it my empty nest? Can hormone changes really take over your whole being? Does the realization that your one-time heroes have disintegrated, challenged to the hilt by old age knock you off your tracks? Perhaps it's just that everything comes at once. The noticeable wrinkle greets the oldest child's wedding; the winding down of fertility coincides with the time you notice Mommy repeating herself; the wispy graying hairs herald in the first winter with achy joints. If only I could have time to digest this process bit by bit, perhaps I would be able to find my way and keep on going.

Time, if only I had more time. Yet the nature of the siding I seem to be travelling down seems to make time into an enemy. Time represents a constant fight against boredom and degeneration. I wake up on Sunday morning with an empty week stretching in front of me. The house is quiet. My race with the washing basket has lost its challenge. My soup kitchen has laid off its helpers. Nobody out there seems to need me. In fact, I have nightmares that one day I will need to be helped myself.

I watch myself for signs of ageing. Every time I can't quite find the correct word or I realize I have repeated myself I give myself memory tests and think about starting a jigsaw puzzle. Multifocals are now a necessary part of life, my children tease me about my hearing, things don't quite taste the way they used to.

Yet with all this, there is still Shabbos. Thinking about Shabbos; preparing for Shabbos; living Shabbos; baruch Hashem. For the rest of the week I strive to fill the hours, build a routine, drown out the seconds ticking away. But filling time isn't living and I want to live.

Back then, I wonder, was I living every moment? I didn't have time to think. I often had to switch to automatic pilot just to complete the day's tasks.

Surely I need deliberation if I am to truly live a moment. I need to intend to be what I am being and do what I am doing, second by second. “Now you have all the time in the world to think and deliberate,” says my inner voice. “Settle down in that comfortable armchair. Wrap yourself in a warm, cozy shawl. Rest your eyes, just a little bit, and think to your heart's content.”

That's it. I think I have forgotten to turn off the automatic pilot mode of thoughtlessness.. Automatic pilot fills my time with old, well-tried, dog-eared doings that have lost all interest and meaning to me. Routines of yesteryear eat up my precious seconds, leaving no room for something new.

Finished! I am going to find myself a sensible straight-backed chair and put it in a comfortable but well-aired spot and sit in it, at about 9 a.m. 9 a.m., a time when the sleepiness of the night before has well worn off and the tiredness of an active or inactive day has not begun to grow. Then I am going to think, to plan, to wonder and to dream.

Perhaps I will write the results down. Perhaps I will just let the impetus carry me out into a world of new adventure.

Even as I think about it I feel myself whizzing backwards along the sidings tracks; here comes those points.… Out goes my hand to the lever … and I pull.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 305)