Key to a harmonious retirement

 

Three years ago on this day I repatriated, and in a couple of months, I will have been retired for three years which feels an ample time to summarise and share some insights. I believe I can claim with confidence that I have made the most of these three years even given all the external horrors we have been through. So here are some reflections – for those who want to hear it.

1). Embrace it. Getting old is not a given, it’s a privilege not everyone can enjoy. Be grateful for every day you are alive and, hopefully, in good health. Think of friends who sadly did not live long enough to experience the pleasure of retirement.

2) If viable economically, retire as early as you can. There is so much to do after retirement that you need as much time as you can get while you are able to fulfil your dreams.

3) Make retirement definite. Cut off all ties to your professional career. I know it may be hard, but think: you have probably worked in more or less the same area for at least forty years. Can you make any further contribution to your field? If you are an academic, do you really want to produce another book, another article, another conference paper? At this point in your career you probably have scores of former students who can carry on and do it as efficiently as you, if not much better. After all, at least theoretically, every next generation of scholars should be better than the previous one. If you are a teacher you have younger colleagues who will hopefully continue to foster new generations of young people. If you are a writer, artist, performer – make room for new talents. If you are in business, surely some younger companion can make it thrive. If you are in public service… and so on. Be honest with yourself: Will the world go on without you? Let me tell you for sure: it will. And as they say: leave when you are on top.

4) What, then, can you ask, should you do with all your spare time? Think of all things you wanted to try and never had time. Maybe you wanted to be a gardener, but your family insisted that you go to university. Maybe you wanted to be an archaeologist, but you had to support your family and got into business instead. Maybe you have always secretly wanted to build model railways. Maybe you wanted to play an instrument or learn a language. Pursue your dreams. Preferably, start, or at least start looking around, before retirement so that on Day 1 you are already enrolled in a class or have a volunteer job waiting. And remember: this time, you don’t have to compete, you can quit if you get bored and want to try something else, and you will never get orders from anyone. Whatever you do, you do it entirely for your own pleasure. If in the process you contribute to saving the world, that’s a bonus. A way to reason with yourself is: by being happy you increase the overall amount of happiness in the universe, which is a huge deed.

5) join a community. You are probably used to have people around you: colleagues, students, people you meet at lunch, your elders and your peers and your subordinates. Suddenly you are on your own. Even if you have a partner and a family, you will lack a wider circle of like-minded, of people who share your interests beyond your profession. Almost every pastime will have a club, or several, physical or virtual. Search “Star Wars”, “Balcony gardening”, “Disc golf”, “Theorbe music”, “Basque cooking”, and you will find people passionate about the same things as you are. And in an unlikely case that you don’t find any, create your own club. It’s enough to be two to start, and you will be amazed how fast it grows.

6) maintain your connections. Stay in touch with your colleagues, on the understanding that you no longer talk shop – find other common interests: camel riding, UFO spotting, mushroom picking, collecting beer-bottle caps. Get in touch with those friends with whom you have been saying the past five years: “We must meet soon”. Nag them, invite them to something exciting. Perhaps one out of ten will respond, and that’s an achievement. Reconnect with your childhood friends, classmates, distant cousins. You will discover that fifty-year-old memories you share will bring you together even closer than you were once. But don’t be afraid to get new acquaintances. Within your new pastimes you will get to know new people so make sure you meet even outside clubs and events. Don’t be shy with people much younger than you. Think: when you were twenty somebody aged thirty was ancient. When you are 65+, age means significantly less. You can make new friends within a range of twenty years younger and, yes, twenty years older. While your recent students may be the same age as your grandchildren, once you no longer are in a teacher-student imbalance it does not matter.

7) all the above will only make sense if you are in good shape. You will doubtless have various ailments but as long as you are generally fit, physically and mentally, your life has a potential to be highly enjoyable. Of course there are things you cannot secure yourself against, but making your health a priority is essential. It doesn’t mean you have to spend three hours a day of your precious time in a gym (unless you like it). There are plenty of other activities: walking, running, biking, dance; and there are classes and clubs for seniors so that you don’t have to feel embarrassed next to perfectly fit youngsters. (Frankly, some retirees are much better fit than many youngsters). Try something you have never tried before. Maybe climbing or paragliding is your favourite, you just don’t know it yet. Don’t let absence of companions stop you, do it on your own. I am aware that some sports can be expensive, and you should not deny yourself anything as long as you can afford it, but there are plenty of things that are free and that can still make you fit and happy.

8) declutter. Whether you downsize or not, there is an enormous sense of freedom in getting rid of worldly possessions, and there are many gurus to guide you, but you can just use your common sense. Did you need dozens of smart outfits during your employment? Will you need them again? Keep two favourites, sell or give away the rest and free space in your wardrobe for nice leisure clothes. Do you really need five sets of dinner plates, seven teapots, ten table cloths and three dozen wine glasses? Will you ever use that cheese fondue pot that someone gave you for Christmas twenty years ago and that you only tried once? Some things will have a sentimental value, but at this stage in your life there is no point in keeping anything that “might come handy one day”. Those days will never happen. Keep only things you know you will use everyday or at least regularly. Ask your children, if you have children, whether they want anything – usually they don’t even when they are just about to start a household of their own. For many of us, the most difficult thing to get rid of will be books. Yet you are beyond the argument: “I might need it for work” or even “I will read it when I have time”. If you bought a book twenty years ago and still haven’t read it you probably won’t. And if you give it away and then suddenly feel an urge to read it, there are libraries. Think: how many books a year can you reasonably read? How many years have you theoretically left? Bookshelves lining every square inch of your walls were once a token of prestige and learning, even if you knew, and your guests knew, that you have only actually read a fraction of them. This attitude goes back all the way to 16^th century or even earlier, when books were rare and expensive. Not any more. So keep only books that you know you will re-read and books that are dear to you, for whatever reason (signed by the author, gifted by a dear friend, books your granny read to you when you were five). Once upon a time first editions could fetch you a fortune, but today it has to be something really exceptional so I wouldn’t bother.

9) adjust your inner clock. My most unexpected and most welcome discovery has been that time flows at a different pace when you don’t have work to go to every day (even if you work from home and just go to your desk). Everything you do you do slower, and everything takes longer – and it’s not simply fine, it’s the whole point! It doesn’t matter if you haven’t finished something you planned in the morning because you have all the time in the world. Maybe you got distracted and did something else, just as exciting, instead. Or maybe you were enjoying whatever you were doing so much that you didn’t want it to end. Or maybe you just needed to wind down and look around and have a quiet cup of tea – a luxury you couldn’t allow yourself before. You can even emphasise this slow pace: walk deliberately slowly paying attention to the environment, move slowly around your dwelling. Don’t multitask. We think that by multitasking we save time, but in fact we waste time because we are never fully engaged with whatever we are doing. Pay attention, live here and now. Have you noticed this funny sculpture by your local bus station that you have passed hundreds of times? Have you observed how the rose bush under your window has grown since last year? Have you considered the pattern on your plates and the exact shade of green on your curtains? Suddenly your life is so much richer in experience than before. Rather than saying, “Where has this week gone?” you say, “This has been such a full and exciting week!”

10) Keep rules and routines you enjoy and ditch those you don’t. If you have always hated that alarm clock ringing at six, throw it away and sleep as long as you wish in the morning. Have breakfast in your dressing gown – or in full makeup if you prefer. Make the bed, cook meals, wash up – if it mattered to you before. But if it didn’t, maybe you will discover that it does now because you will spend more time at home and want it to be neat. Absence of schedule may feel frustrating so make a schedule for yourself, based on your pastimes: yoga on Monday morning, baking club on Tuesday afternoon, and so on. Shop for groceries on the same day of the week. Water your plants at the same hour. It will bring structure into your life, without creating pressure. Because you are completely free to break your own rules.

11) Once again – and I know it is pathetically trivial – wake up every morning grateful that you are alive and in anticipation of wonderful things that the day has in store. If by the end of the day nothing spectacular has happened, you should still be grateful and hopeful about the day to come.

A lonely woman’s New Year Eve

 Forty two years ago I went to the Library of Foreign Literature in Moscow to read Swedish newspapers. In those dark and evil days, foreign newspapers, unless published by approved Communist parties, were only accessible in special reading rooms that required a permit. Permits were issued if for whatever reason you needed this dangerous reading matter for work. I had a permit, renewable every year, because I had to read Swedish film reviews for work. In the largest Swedish morning daily, film reviews appeared on the page facing columns, so when I opened the paper on that January day I saw a column titled “A lonely man’s New Year Eve”. I had just had a brief and stormy affair with a married Swedish journalist, and I was really sad to read his column describing his lonely celebration. Why on Earth was he alone on New Year Eve? Where was his family? Didn’t he have friends? I was used to wild New Year parties or at least quiet New Year parties in the company of close friends, and I felt so profoundly sorry for the lonely man that I had no mental energy to read any film reviews that day. 

Eventually the brief and stormy affair developed into a long and stormy marriage, and during those years I would occasionally go back to Moscow for New Year and leave my husband to spend it on his own, but more often we had wild parties and quiet family evenings, and every year we would listen to New Year Eve bells from Sweden’s thirteen cathedrals on the radio, followed by La Jouissance.

The last two years, I spent the New Year Eve on my own. I considered feeling sorry for myself. I considered ignoring it altogether and going to bed as usual (a bit difficult with loud firework displays outside). Then I decided that dignity demanded I celebrate no matter what. This year in particular I had learned that several of my close friends were also spending New Year Eve on their own. There was nothing extraordinary about it. (I guess during years with wild parties and quiet family evenings I never gave a thought to people mentioned by the radio host: “If you are lonely this night…”).

I prepared an elegant four-course dinner for myself. I bought a piccolo bottle of sparkling (I don’t drink alcohol otherwise, but I can make an exception for New Year Eve). I set the table nicely. I lit candles. I dressed up. I gave the cats some extra delicious food I had saved for the occasion. During my meal, I listened to Baroque Tafelmusik on Spotify. Between the meal and midnight, I watched a movie and did a jigsaw puzzle. I sent good vibes and WhatsApp messages to my lonely friends. At midnight, I opened the bottle and listened to cathedral bells, ignoring the loud fireworks outside. I cried floods, remembering all those previous New Years and realising how much I valued them, although sometimes I got irritated: “Can’t we listen to something else for a change?” It turns out, I cannot. And the radio host’s words resonated deeply: “If you are lonely this night...”

Annual report 2021

At this time of year I habitually write an annual report. I have just discovered, to my amazement, that I didn’t last year, and when I contemplate the reason it’s probably exactly why I am hesitant about doing it now. While most people I know, and millions that I don’t know, are experiencing the worst time imaginable, my year has been exciting and enjoyable.

True, there were two losses in the family, one profoundly tragic, the other perhaps less so, while it hit me more than I had expected. When I walked off three years ago I thought the hurt was so huge that I would never care whether my partner of almost forty years was dead or alive. Yet when he passed away this past autumn, it was as if the three years apart had been erased, and grief was acute. In a weird way it felt good since it was a closure much needed, as it turns out. To my surprise, I miss him terribly and only remember the good things from our years together. So, paradoxically, even a loss can add depth and meaning to your life.

Apart from that, and apart from some worrying health issues in the family, my life has not been affected by the global disasters. I eventually got covid last month, but thanks to three vaccine jabs, I had it mildly and was fully recovered after a week. Sweden has never had a full lockdown, and even during the tightest restrictions I was able to meet my grandchildren outdoors. This autumn we went to concerts, theatre and movies, met for coffee and meals – almost as normal. (There will never be the former normal again of course). I am blessed with grandchildren who want to spend some time with their old granny. I don’t think they do it out of duty. Maybe they find me interesting in some way. And not to forget – a granddaughter got married last September!

This year saw some great accomplishments, some planned, others unexpected. I took a three-day training to become a certified walking guide, and since then I have been leading walks both in my own neighbourhood and further away. I enjoy it a lot – hopefully my co-walkers do too. I made some new friends that way.

I have also continued my urban walks based on children’s books. I know these have been appreciated.

From my post-retirement wish list, I started learning Welsh. I had a choice between Welsh, Japanese and Hebrew, and I was perhaps a bit reluctant to choose a language with totally unfamiliar script, but Welsh proved challenging enough. I am learning for fun, as a brain exercise so I have no aspiration of ever getting fluent (“Bydda i erioed yn rhugl”). I do half an hour every day, sometimes more. I have learned just over a thousand words since I started last January. I don’t know (it has been such a long time since I learned a foreign language) how it compares to an average pace of learning, but I can construct simple phrases and even write brief journal entries. I speak Welsh to myself whenever there is an opportunity, like “Dw i’n mynd i gwneud coffi nawr”. I have joined a Facebook group of Welsh learners, for support and for fun.

An unexpected new activity has been ikebana, Japanese flower arrangement. I have always been fascinated, but never considered pursuing it; a friend invited me to a digital meeting of their Ikebana International chapter, I contacted my local chapter, they offered me a free trial class, and I was hooked. I had claimed repeatedly that I hate cut flowers because I feel upset when they wither, but ikebana is by definition an ephemeral art form where flowers are supposed to die so it turned out I could accept it. I have now received the first certificate and am halfway through the second one. A certificate is like a completed term in college, with a certain number of assignments to submit, and there are ten levels so I have yet far to go. I like clear goals, but the important thing is the joy of creation, as well as the sense of getting better. When I look at pictures of my first arrangements, they are pathetic, and I was so proud of them back then.

My miniature-making has also moved on to new heights. My business is going well with its premises. Since I am not dependent on it for a living, I feel satisfaction from the simple fact that people like my stuff and even make special orders. I now feel confident to make things I never dreamed of making a few years ago so when asked whether I can make this or that, I say: I have never made it before, but I can try. I don’t like mass-producing things (although I have occasionally made fifty tiny pumpkins on request), but rather inventing new things. I am a recycler and like using rubbish for my projects. I have the privilege of belonging to a hugely selective miniature club where I am learning a lot. I have participated in my first miniature show. I am building up a reputation. Luckily, so much networking can be done online, even though there is nothing like live events.

Book-binding hasn’t been as prominent this year, but I have tried some new techniques there as well.

I continue with balcony gardening (although not right now when it’s minus fifteen), enjoying the colours of my flowers and the taste of my veggies. I haven’t done as much as I could have, but I have made several improvements. 

In my communal garden, I enjoyed tulips and daffodils I had planted the year before; I harvested blackcurrants that I had planted the year before, and our maintenance team have, on my request, planted lilacs, magnolias and rhododendron we will enjoy next year.

I haven’t achieved my walking goal of 1,500 km, being short by 300. Maybe I set the goal too high, or maybe I was lazy. But how could I have been lazy when I walked almost 80 km on Camino de Santiago? A dream come true, after three postponements due to well-known reasons. 

Moreover, I went on two more walking holidays within Sweden, one of which my first mountain hike. Sweden is great for walking, and there is so much to explore!

With other exercise, my Pilates gym was closed for a while, but this autumn classes resumed, which was great. Since the gym is in town I frequently combined it with meeting a friend for lunch. I have also tried climbing and loved it. I will certainly do it again.

In spring, I took two online classes at Seniors’ University (aka University of Third Age), one in astronomy, the other on deserts. The latter proved more interesting. I realised I had been to half of world’s famous deserts, but I had no idea why they were where they were. Now I know. Always fun to learn something new.

My reading goal this year was 30 books, and my challenge was reading recent Swedish novels that I had neglected over the last ten years. I have read 35. Some were great reading experience, and many critically acclaimed and award-winning books were awful. At least I am now better informed about what is going on in Swedish literature.

I have enjoyed a lot of music this year. While concert halls were still closed I listened to free streamed and recorded concerts, but this autumn I went to a live concert almost every week. I have also been to opera, ballet and musical. Every morning and every evening I listen to Spotify. I like its feature Weekly Discovery. The algorithm alternates my favourites with its own suggestions which are indeed discoveries I probably wouldn’t have made myself. (By the way, “concerts” for me is exclusively classic music). Spotify tells me that my most listened-to artist this year was Alison Balsom, which was unexpected. My top piece, for second year running, is “Farewell to Stromness” since it is my bedtime music.

I have become quite fond of TV series – a genre I used to despise, which is of course a snobbish prejudice. My favourite this year was “The Good Place”. Occasionally I binge-watch, but mostly I watch one episode a day, looking forward to the pleasure the day after.

I still enjoy cooking for myself and trying new recipes. A Cambridge friend and I have had several cook-along days when we choose a cuisine and exchange our experience, in words and pictures, through WhatsApp. We have done Greek, Basque, Swedish, Sicilian, and more. When you cannot meet live, digital sessions are almost as good. 

I never thought I would bake so much, or bake at all, but here I am, baking buns, cakes and biscuits and even bread, just for myself.

Last but not least, my feline masters are getting more and more benevolent. One day they will sit on my lap.

Unlike most previous years, I have no publications nor any other academic accomplishments. There may have been some, but I have totally ignored them. I am still getting tons of invitations to give a conference paper, to contribute to a volume, to examine a thesis or review a book proposal, to which I reply: “You have received my auto-response, and I can confirm that…” The only thing that reminds me of my academic past is regular royalties.

I have been consistent in my anti-consumerism, and apart from craft supplies and a couple of essential kitchen utensils I honestly haven’t bought anything this year. I haven’t bought a single item of clothing, except a black skirt I needed for a funeral, and I got it from a second-hand shop. The only book I bought was a guidebook for the mountain area where I went hiking. My first-generation iPad from 2011 still serves me well.

This year marked forty years since I left Russia. My son and I celebrated appropriately, agreeing that it was the right thing to do. I have never regretted it.

As I have stated before, perception of time is different when you get old. I feel no stress, no pressing goals; every day is long and full of meaning. The pace is slow, and if at the end of the day I state that I haven't done anything useful, there is no need to be upset. I don't believe in happiness, but this is peace that you could not possibly imagine when you were young. 

At this point we typically make plans for the coming year. I can hardly imagine it being better still, but I do have things to look forward to. To begin with, I will be three-score and ten, and I intend to celebrate in style. I hope to walk another bit of the Camino. There may be another interesting travel experience. I have signed up for more craft shows. There are concert and theatre tickets waiting. Of course none of this may happen at all, but I have learned to take one day at a time and be grateful for every day I am alive and able to enjoy it. I am profoundly grateful for the joys of 2021.

Annual report

Typically, annual reports are written at the end of a calendar year. I have done so myself repeatedly in this blog. But today is a year since I retired, and I feel it's a good moment to look back at my long and winding road from there.

I came back to Sweden after eleven years in Cambridge without a permanent home, with unsold property in the UK, not knowing exactly what my financial situation was, and uncertain about reconnecting with my old networks. I wasn't even sure I would feel at home in Sweden. I won't enumerate the various health issues I had, but there were a few.

And yet I was determined not to let any external circumstances interfere with the new phase of my life in which I had decided, well in advance, to be contented, physically and mentally active, to pursue new interests and enjoy the time-left.

I joined a walking club, signed up for Pilates classes, got a subscription for Stockholm Concert Hall, reached out to old friends who were remarkably responsive and nice. I started a small business.

By December, I had a home of my own, the UK property was sold, my financial situation was stable, and in January I was adopted by two charming cats. I was invited to a miniature-making club, attended classes, joined another gym, met more friends, took my grandchildren to theatre. I did 10-12 km walks several times a week – I firmly believe I have walked myself back to sanity.

We all know what happened next. I am ashamed to admit that I wasn't as drastically affected as most other people. Unlike many other countries, Sweden never went into total lockdown, and most restrictions concerned people over 70, but I decided to play it safe and self-isolated. Concerts and theatre shows were cancelled, cinemas were closed. In mid-March I was supposed to participate in a miniature show. My dream holiday, walking Camino de Santiago de Compostella, planned for May, was postponed more or less indefinitely. My Cambridge friends who were supposed to visit in April… and so on.

But I am grateful to be alive and in good health, to have a home and not worry about where my next meal is coming from.

Just before everything closed, I had a garden designer start my balcony garden, and every morning I go out into my tiny garden full of colours and fragrances.

By mid-May, Swedish grandparents were permitted to meet their grandchildren outdoors. I am blessed with grandchildren who happily came over for walks and picnics.

By mid-June, I started cautiously to use public transport to go and visit friends and family. I also decided it was safe to let friends with cars take me for walks and swims. It would have been practical right now to have a car, but on the other hand I decided a year ago that I would never drive a car again. I became friends with a neighbour, and we have made many pleasurable excursions together.

Summer is a quiet time in Sweden as most people go away to their summer cottages. By now, they are back, and it feels safe to start meeting again. Cinemas have reopened, and I have already been once. There were just seven people in there.

I am not sure about gyms; I am not sure about how the Concert Hall is going to organise the concerts, but I have renewed my subscription, and I have already attended a concert with fifty people in the audience, which was weird, especially when it came to clapping. Fifty people clapping in a large hall is a strange experience. Otherwise, there are streamed concerts almost every day.

My walking club has resumed the walks twice a week, and although I have enjoyed walking on my own, the sense of community is great after a long forced break. I have even signed up to become a leader! 

Similarly, the miniature club is meeting regularly. All miniature shows are cancelled until further notice, but there are some online activities.

I have organised walking seminars of my own, built around some famous children’s books set in Stockholm. To my surprise and joy they proved to be popular. All were booked up within hours of announcements, and there are long waiting lists. In this way, I combine my passion for walking with my professional qualifications. And I am leaning a lot about my home city.

The current situation is not going away any time soon, so everybody will have to adjust. It is weird that the first year of the new phase of my life coincided with such a major global change.

A time to every purpose

I have been writing this post mentally for quite a while, long before the current situation, but it feels more relevant now than ever. I have been reluctant to share my reflections because I might sound self-righteous, and I am also aware that I am exceptionally privileged, since in my retirement I have no obligations, I have stable economy, good health and other benefits many people are denied. And yet I am disturbed by what I hear and read these days about frustration and boredom; all kinds of highly contradictory statements. Some people say time has stopped, some that it has expanded beyond reason; some don't know what to do with their time; some feel the “before” was centuries ago, some look in horror at just a few weeks back; some see no future, some cannot wait for future to arrive.

I have written a book about time in children's literature. After twenty years, I still think it is the best book I have written, unjustly not having received as much attention as it should have. In this book, I explore the use of circular, mythic time in classic children's books and the ways this archaic time – kairos – occasionally opens into linearity, chronos. But kairos is not simply here and now; it's vast, it includes all past down to the beginning of time and it stretches into the future to the end of time and beyond. It is recurrent in changes of seasons, in death and rebirth. It includes all parallel worlds, beliefs and imaginings. Australian Aborigines' concept of Dreamtime is one of the closest ways of grasping it, although it is hard for us, Westerners, to understand, because we are conditioned to value linear, measurable, goal-oriented time; we are told that the so-called carefree time of childhood is something to leave behind and grow up and start living according to clocks, calendars, schedules, timetables, and achievements. This is what children's literature endeavours to prepare us for. Yes, the little boy and his teddy bear will always be playing in the Hundred-Acre Wood, and yet we know that the boy is going away to boarding school, where he will be introduced to spelling, multiplication tables and citizenship. This is inevitable, but all great children's books remind us of kairos, of the “very long time ago, maybe last Friday”. Of the time of always, usually, habitually, every Sunday, every summer. Some languages have tenses and modalities to express this iterativity.

What no literature, children's or other, has prepared me for, is return to kairos in old age. I am not sure whether the rapidly expanding academic area of age studies has paid attention to this phenomenon. And I don't remember any work of fiction that describes it. There are of course numerous stories about old people, but usually with negative connotations, focusing on illness, loneliness, disappointment, fear of death. I cannot think of any story that highlights the pleasures of getting old. Maybe because halcyon old age doesn't constitute a good plot. It isn't as exciting as opening up childhood idyll into constant linear advancement, nor promising the vague, even if encouraging happily-ever-after. But as people of my age know, there is more after happily-ever-after. Once our linear progression slows down and eventually stops, we don't die yet. Instead, at least some of us are blessed with returning into Dreamtime, to the all-encompassing Grand Time we lost when we decided or were forced to grow up.

They say that senescence is the second childhood, but it is not true. As Clémentine Beauvais demonstrates in her research, a child is mighty because of their vast resources of time-left, time-yet-to-spend. An old person, returning to kairos after a life of stressful, competitive linearity, has limited time-left. I don't know exactly how much time I have left, but statistically it is significantly less than I had when I was a child. Yet this is only true if we think in linear, goal-oriented terms. If kairos has no beginning or end, if it has no structure, then it makes no sense to measure it the way we measure linear time. I don't have any deadlines or goals. I may still want to walk a thousand kilometers by the end of 2020 or climb to the height of Everest adding up my daily climbs; I may want to build another dollhouse or harvest tomatoes on my balcony. Yet these are desires, not goals. I have left all anxieties of my adult life behind (and yes, once again, I am aware of being exceptionally privileged). Like a very young (privileged) child, I don't have to worry where my next meal comes from. I am my own master, and unless I want them, I have no societal constraints, no rules to play by. I have got rid of as many possessions as I could; when you don't owe much you don't worry about losing it. Like in childhood, procreation is not an issue. I have no fear of death, because, although I hope to live a few more years, death will not rob me of my life, long and on the whole quite satisfactory. While a young child is not yet aware of their own mortality, I have come to terms with it and thus become immortal. My present life is a life of total harmony. A life in Arcadia. A life in kairos.

This is where the current situation comes in, and this is where I am running a risk of sounding sanctimonious. I feel leaving chronos behind is a relief. I still need to keep track of days to know when my groceries delivery is coming, and I need to know when the live-streamed concert starts, but apart from that days are determined by sunrise and sunset, meal time is when I am hungry and bedtime is when I am tired. In between there are so many exciting things to fill my days, and every day is Sunday, and it is always summer. Unlike childhood, there is nothing I must learn because it will be useful later in life. I can gather totally useless knowledge and acquire totally useless skills. I can “waste time” because I have unlimited supply of it. I have the peace of mind to feel joy about everything I do, everything I see, hear, touch, smell. I do not look back with nostalgia or regrets at my past. I do not look with hope into the future. I do not feel anxious about the future either. I am not longing for anything, least of all any return to my previous lifestyle. I enjoy being away from civilisation and close to nature. And of course remoteness and isolation are the very tokens of kairos.

All this happened to me before everyone's lives changed so dramatically. Therefore I believe I am so much better prepared for the current situation. I don't want to preach, just to share my experience. Even if you still have your commitments, stop and reflect. This is the opportunity to capture a few moments of kairos, if only to realise that it is there for you when you feel you have completed your linear, measurable, goal-oriented existence. Don't misunderstand me: I used to live that hectic life myself. We are trained to in our society. Returning to kairos involved a lot of effort and determination, but it was worth the trouble. Your voluntary or involuntary isolation is a valuable, albeit temporary escape from linearity, but not a nostalgic escape to prelapsarian childhood – you still have your adult responsibilities, and you can never shed your adult knowledge and experience; neither a blind-folded sideways escape to idyllic fantasy from which you return no wiser. It is a glimpse of the reward to come – if you let it come, if you don't lament the “waste of time”, the days and weeks and months stolen from you, but see them as days, weeks and months gifted to you as a password to kairos when your are ready. To everything there is a time and a season. A time to rush, and a time to pause.

 Ill. Kate Greenaway