Is It Time For A Spring Clean?

Photo by Elena Koycheva on Unsplash

“It’s not Charlton Heston in a robe,” said Elizabeth Gilbert.

My urge to spring clean arrived on Tuesday.

On Monday evening, I watched the finale of The White Lotus. It ended in a somewhat farcical shootout beside the pool. “It was the show’s least satisfying ending ever,” said The Guardian. It was the Swiss theologian Karl Barth who (apparently) said, “take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible¹”. Now, he might suggest Netflix or Sky Atlantic or Apple TV instead. They are ripe for interpretation. They are where people are gathering these days, where they are spending their time. They are also where they are getting their instructions on how to live.

The White Lotus is primarily interested in teaching us lessons about the rich. It has much to say on the myth of success and the lure of power and the gnawing emptiness that exists inside those who seemingly have it all because over and over again, we are shown how they must live with the fear of losing this. Even Belinda, the most integrous character to date, after a (short) battle with her conscience, is willing to sacrifice her soul for five million bucks of hush money. The White Lotus holds a mirror up to the darkest side of human nature. It zooms in on vanity and greed and insecurity and that desperate need for validation. And, in the final episode, there was also this really weird thing that Laurie said about time.

My urge to spring clean had nothing to do with actual cleaning. It did not involve taking down the drapes and brushing them or beating a Persian rug in the garden or even moving the fridge. It definitely didn’t include touching the windows. It involved studying the contents of my wardrobe. Did I have the right life for these clothes anymore? Were they from another time? Did I love them enough? Did they even fit? Was I squeezing myself into them? Did they just make me feel bad?

It had become kind of an annual tradition, this re-evaluation as the seasons changed. I stuffed some winter coats into a bag for dry cleaning. I folded jumpers and packed away scarves. And as I started to clear out and alternated between eBay and the recycling and the charity shop and the bin, I shifted my focus. What about the rest of my life, the places I might go wearing this wardrobe? Did I want to be part of that thing anymore? Did I love it enough? Was I squeezing myself into it? Was I getting anything out of that relationship? Did I even like those people? Did they just make me feel bad?

Because every now and then, we might need to spring clean it, how we use our time.

On the final night of their stay in a luxurious Thai resort, Laurie has an epiphany over dinner. She, and her two ‘old’ friends are reflecting on their ‘successful’ holiday, a chance to reconnect after far too long not seeing each other. “All our flowers are in bloom,” says Kate, who attends church every Sunday and voted Trump and whose decision-making mainly consists of agreeing with everyone else. “I’ve just been in the best mood all week,” says Jaclyn, a famous actress, whose ego has been boosted by continual recognition and regular requests for selfies.

“That’s funny because if I’m being honest, all week I’ve been so sad,” says Laurie. “I just feel like as you get older, you have to justify your life, you know? And your choices”.

And because we’ve already watched seven previous episodes and seen the toxicity of this trio, the passive-aggressive undermining, the judgments, the gaslighting, the fact that Laurie feels like her choices have mainly been mistakes when she measures them against the ones her friends have made, we might breathe a sigh of relief and think this could be it. This might be the moment when Laurie realises she’s wasting her time with these two who only make her feel bad.

Except it isn’t.

“I’m glad you have a beautiful face,” she says to Jaclyn. “And I’m glad you have a beautiful life,” she says to Kate. “And I’m just happy to be at the table”.

Many reviews said this was a wonderful commentary on the complexities of female friendship, that realisation that it was ok to vicariously live your life through your friends, to spend your days admiring their lives whilst never admiring your own. But British Vogue, at least, felt it was the heftiest let-down of all, that Laurie continued to tolerate the artifice of a relationship she’d grown out of. “Laurie ultimately succumbed to the illusion,” it said.

And then there was that really weird thing she said about time. It turned out Laurie had no belief system. Work had been her religion and then she’d tried love, but that was just painful and then being a mother didn’t save her either. “But I had this epiphany today,” she said. “I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning because time gives it meaning”.

And it sounded great that time gave life meaning but what did this mean? A life was made up of time and there was no time without life and where did time come from? It was meaningfully meaningless, a paradox, so stuffed with meaning, it had lost all meaning. In many ways, the constant search for meaning was meaningless. “There is no resolution to life’s questions. It is easier to be patient once we finally accept this,” said the monk in The White Lotus. “It’s not Charlton Heston in a robe,” said Elizabeth Gilbert.

A voice will not come from the heavens some day and tell us finally, eventually, yes, we have found it, our life’s meaning. We have correctly used our time. And I wondered what Karl Barth would do to shed some light on all this. “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil,” it said in Ephesians but there were no exact instructions on what this looked like, minute by minute, second by second, on a daily basis, when we went to put something into our diary.

In the book I’d written all about leaving², I’d said, “one of the main hurdles I had to overcome was my complicated relationship with time”. This included not always having to justify what I was doing with it, turning it into an evidence-based schedule of worthy activities. I had to leave this idea that I should always have something to show for it. We become obsessed with using time well, says Oliver Burkeman. But “the more you focus on using time well, the more each day begins to feel like something you have to get through, en route to some calmer, better, more fulfilling point in the future, which never actually arrives”³. And so many of us suffer from this terrible affliction, this sense that we are never quite using our time well enough.

“The secret of life is to waste time in ways that you like,” said comedian Jerry Seinfeld. But what did he mean? Was this a paradox too? Maybe he simply meant that the secret to life is not to waste time in ways that you dislike, to never believe that worthy can outrun resentment.

Spring cleaning my time wasn’t about checking whether something was good use of it. It was about making sure it wasn’t bad.

1. In Time magazine in 1966.

2. Apologies for mentioning it again. It’s still available at https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/T5AYN3PYT32JL

3. Four Thousand Weeks.