A meter of Life…Maybe we only get fifty or sixty centimetres of life. Some people do not even get that. But it is still a life.
🇸🇪 Read the Swedish version here En meter liv
It is Saturday evening, and we have just finished a barbecue dinner that my husband treated us to today.
Full and content, I am sitting here while the dishes spin around in the dishwasher, slowly becoming clean.
We went into town today. My husband bought some clothes with his gift cards, and I found a few things as well. A pair of light blue trousers and a linen blouse. Two beautiful flowers also came home with me, and they are already planted.
I also found watercolours.
Ouch, they were expensive – more than 600 SEK.
But I want to learn.
I really cannot paint with watercolours. When I try, it mostly looks as if a child has been holding the brush.
But I will learn.
Today I was simply experimenting. I did not really paint anything at all. I was mostly testing the colours to see how they behaved on the paper.
It is completely different from oil painting. I realise it probably requires a technique that I do not yet have.
But everyone has to start somewhere.
Today I also planted the little dahlias in their pots. I almost think they became happy the moment they got outside.
Tomorrow we will harvest the first cucumber from the greenhouse.
Everything grows so quickly now.
Sometimes it feels as if I can no longer keep up with everything that is growing.
But I do the best I can.
The Pavilion and the Feeling of an Awning
Right now I am sitting outside beneath our pavilion, writing.
The wind catches the fabric panels we have pulled closed, and sometimes it almost feels like sitting inside a caravan awning.
That is something I actually miss from our caravan days.
The cosy feeling of the awning.
The evenings.
The voices outside.
People walking past on their way to their pitches.
Here I get a little of that same feeling.
A car passes by.
The wind can be heard and felt as it catches the fabric.
Perhaps it flutters more here than it would in an awning, because there everything is secured with pegs and guy lines.
But the feeling is still there.
A Meter of Life
I have been thinking about my former colleague today.
My husband and I talked about him.
Life is not fair.
At the same time, it passes so quickly.
Sometimes we know so little about what is happening in other people’s lives.
We do not know when that last meeting will be.
We do not know that what we say or do may be the last thing someone receives from us.
It has made me think even more about how important it is that what we leave behind lands softly.
That we move through life in gentle circles.
His passing left something with me.
Something that has become clearer with every day since I read the obituary.
A person you knew.
Worked with.
Laughed with.
And suddenly he is no longer here.
There were only seven years between us.
Seven years.
It sounds like a long time.
But really, it is nothing at all.
A Meter of Life May Become Half a Meter
I sometimes think about life as a metre.
But now I wonder if that is even the right way to see it.
Perhaps we should be grateful if we get half.
Fifty centimetres.
Maybe that is where we should begin.
Not by thinking about everything we lack.
But about everything we have actually been given.
Every morning.
Every cup of coffee.
Every laugh.
Every conversation.
Every cucumber growing in the greenhouse.
Every person we get to keep for one more day.
The thought that today is the first day of the rest of our lives has come closer to me lately.
And perhaps there is something else there as well.
That it is actually my responsibility to make myself happy.
Right now, making myself happy is sitting here.
Hearing the wind.
Enjoying the scents of everything that lives out here.
Pressing one key after another and allowing time to simply be here, in this very moment.
Someone else might think I am a boring person.
But it is not someone else’s life that I am living.
I am living my life.
And I want to live it in my own way.
To take my own life seriously.
Not later.
Not when everything is finished.
Not when everything is perfect.
But now.
Today.
When I think about A Meter of Life today, it is less about how long life is and more about what we choose to fill it with.
Reflection on A Meter of Life
We never know how long our metre will be.
But we do know that it grows shorter with every passing day.
Perhaps that is why life is not about filling every centimetre with achievement.
Perhaps it is about filling it with presence.
And about making sure that what we leave behind in other people lands softly.
What would change in your life if you lived a little more as though every day truly counted?
Your Voice: Between the Lines
This post is not really about a barbecue dinner, dahlias, or cucumbers.
It is about death moving a little closer to awareness.
Not as fear.
But as a reminder.
That life is happening now.
That people mean more than we think.
And that happiness may not be something we find.
Perhaps it is something we choose to take responsibility for on an ordinary Saturday evening beneath a pavilion while the wind makes the fabric flutter.
Perhaps that metre of life is even shorter than we think.
Which makes it even more important to fill every millimetre with a sense of meaning, a sense of presence, and a sense of truly being where life is happening.
Further Reading
- An earlier reflection on the length of life
- Thoughts about time from an older post
- My Aunt and the Lavender
- When Someone Who Has Always Been There Suddenly Isn’t (only in Swedish)
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Yesterday has already come to rest in history, and tomorrow waits further ahead. But right now – this is where life happens. 🌿💚
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