The beginning of Side B of the Eagles album, Hotel California, begins with a reprise of the last song on Side A, Wasted Time. It is a beautiful few minutes of an orchestral rendition of this haunting song. A song that played on many record players over and over and over after a break up.
Reprise is defined as a repeated passage of music. Repeated. As I sat listening to the song I was reminded of my very first blog on January 1, 2015, entitled Wasted Time. It explored the idea that time was never wasted if it was about the lessons of life, of our soul as we heal, grow and transform. It spoke to the winding road I took to finally understand that without self-love and a strong feeling of self-worth, you were living under the pretense that everything you wanted was outside of you. You chase, control, grasp and hang onto things and people who probably aren’t going to bring out the best in you. That our learning and lessons of our past are never a waste of time, they are opportunities for growth.
Fast forward to 2023, nothing feels as if it has been wasted time. I have truly learned from every experience I have had in my life, especially over the last 5 years. During this time I have lost friendships as I have shed layers of protection and now see some of those were never going to give me the love that I desired. I have lost loves, as I have grown and are more bold in my conviction of how I want to be loved and they cannot give that to me. I have lost others as I have grown to trust my energy and know whose energy I want around me and whose energy I limit. All of these losses could be deemed that, losses. Except they really aren’t. They are examples of growth to me. I have boundaries that I now fully honor; as an element of strong self-love, I will not dishonor what I need for others anymore.
The largest lesson about wasted time for me is that time is just a construct that we create. Given that construct, we can use it however we need. There really is no such thing as “I don’t have time for that.” We can make time to do anything, it is always about priorities. It is always about will. It is always about what is truly important to us. It is also about staying busy to avoid feeling. If I am too busy to feel then I don’t have to think about situations and my reactions to them. If I am too busy to feel, then all those emotions stuffed down into my body cannot come up. The fear many of us is just that, an uncertainty that if we let those floodgates open, will we ever be the same? Will we ever come out from under the heavy weight of suppressed emotion? YES! Once it is up and out and you can look at it objectively, you learn. You grow. You transform. It no longer has power over you.
Busyness is actually a hindrance to healing, growth and transformation. It is actually the time waster. By staying busy we stunt our growth as a spiritual being. We hold ourselves back. It is wasted time.
Nothing is wasted time. We realize as we move through life that everything is a part of our journey to our best and purest version of ourselves. The last line of the song, ‘maybe some day we will find, that it wasn’t really wasted time.’
None of it is wasted time.