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Tuesday
23rd July

Transforming lack into abundance

When in 1987 I found out I was living with HIV, the thought that I would turn seventy didn’t even occur to me. I would have gladly settled for five extra years had I been given the chance. When I did turn seventy not too long ago it was a triumph over the odds. I’m extraordinarily privileged compared to many people diagnosed with HIV at the same time; most of them were not as lucky as I was.

 

I feel both grateful and exultant but somehow it hadn’t really sunk in that my turning seventy not only beat all probabilities, but also means I’m on my way to reaching old age.

 

Of course, I had noticed that it takes longer to regain my energy after a strenuous work-out, that the pace at which I walk is just a bit less brisk than before and that some mornings I don’t wake up refreshed even after a good night’s sleep. I attributed that decreased energy to my anti-HIV medication and hoped that even more sophisticated drugs would give me back my full vitality in the future.

 

Only recently did it dawn on me that this diminished energy is not only due to the pills I take, but above all to the age I’ve reached thanks to that very medication. I am now an older person and energy will remain in waning supply.

This means that I must be more selective about how I use that dwindling resource. At first that felt like a frustrating limitation because there’s so much I still want to do. But there also things I do out of obligation, and I’m slowly learning to let go of these self-imposed tasks in order to focus on what’s truly important: Felipe, my friends and family, my art projects and writing.

 

I particularly enjoy that I now allow myself all the time I need to write a piece. I used to be always in a hurry, I didn’t want to disappoint my blog-readers, so I felt I should publish at set intervals. Now I’m trying to lay off that mental fabrication and post a piece whenever it’s ready. I delight in the pleasure of polishing, and can spend a week changing a word here, adding a clarifying sentence there or cutting an unnecessary paragraph. The piece you’re reading now took even longer, but I managed to keep my sense of haste at bay.

 

Time is my most precious commodity; I have less of it now, but I use it more generously for what matters most to me. At seventy, I’m transforming the feeling of a lack of time into a feeling of abundance of time. Not without effort, I must admit.

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