ONCE: The High Cost of Not Living

By Timothy Barrett

Timely, deeply thoughtful—no better description for the book Once. Its pithy, monosyllabic title rouses a desire to get beyond its beautiful cover and explore. The book's point of departure is the sobering fact that while life may seem a revolving door, it is really a one-way journey. While aspects seem to repeat, they only share similarities with new occurrences, each event or opportunity is unique. Happily, Once insists that we can seize opportunities and possess the ability and right to self-define more than we know or practice. The book offers brilliant and easily accessible ways to a fuller, more rewarding existence.

In his own words, author Dr Timothy Barrett makes it clear why he wrote: "I have been concerned about people living less than best lives for some time, starting with my own reflection based on the reality that there are no second chances, another chance, maybe, but no repeats."

Well-worth heeding, Barrett is a physician and trained psychiatrist, a world traveler, former Olympian and intellectual who has written this highly readable and accessible small volume from a deeply personal space: the fount of challenging professional experiences and the courage and honesty to share personal experiences. Attracting international respect, Barrett maintains an active practice and, by invitation, has conducted workshops and participated in professional and government-level conferences on mental health worldwide.

"These are the times that try men's souls." Here are words of the 18th century philosopher Thomas Paine, which perfectly capture the tenor of the angst-ridden, pandemic-weary, "what's next"- fearful 21st century, which has brought increasing stresses and losses. Even more important, Once is a needful alternative to social media platforms that emphasize overnight fortunes, exempting us from taking responsibility for our lives.

Once offers the following pertinent points of Barrett's professional experience and beliefs with faith, humour and an undeniable intelligence and sincerity:
Our failure to take advantage of opportunities because we do not call them opportunities;
Our penchant for comfort-seeking… leading to mediocrity and preventing us from growing and developing into our best selves;
Not understanding our uniqueness and therefore self-worth, leading to unfortunate comparisons;
We have one chance to live this life, so let's do it to the best of our knowledge and ability;
Last but not least, we must remember to never leave God out of the equation.

Once is a cheerleader for life more abundant and should stand the test of time. It is not to be missed by people who value life or would like to learn how to do so joyfully.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098373672

Book preview

BIO

Preface

This book is dedicated to family members, past and present, who played a powerful role in creating the culture that shaped my outlook towards life and on whose shoulders I stand. My grandmother, grandfather, mother, father and three uncles have passed—Charles, Dennis and Timothy Baswell. Only an uncle and an aunt—Luther and Verna—remain.

My immediate and extended family continues to be a source of enjoyment and encouragement for me, and I thank my immediate family for their feedback to ideas I shared with them while writing this book.

Finally, I include my very good friend Jimmy who suggested at lunch one day that I write a book and Harry, a prolific author, whom I promised I would get my book written when I participated in his book launch.

I was born, raised and live in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, one of the most beautiful places on the face of the earth, a chain of islands that many people consider a natural paradise. When people visit and see the beauty and enjoy the wonderful climate that the local population is exposed to day after day (and take for granted), they often wonder how people living in such an environment could get stressed out. But, the reality is that the human condition, with all its challenges, especially in the era of the World Wide Web, is also experienced by Bahamians. In fact, that same World Wide Web, with all the advantages that it offers to today’s world, has produced a disadvantage in that we seem to be losing civility—social know-how and skills, the ability to communicate face-to-face and respect our differences. Not that I am longing for the good old days, I like and use many of the modern technological advances. I am longing for the good old ways.

Not too long ago I had the opportunity to meet with a group of policemen from the local police force, consisting of persons who worked in very high-stress areas of crime scene investigation and crime detection. The gathering was for a psychological debriefing and, as always, was long overdue. I started out by sharing my condolences on the loss of several of their colleagues in the weeks prior to my meeting with them, and they thanked me for my consideration. I pointed out to them, however, that police officers do not die. At that point, I got raised eyebrows and curious looks from everyone in the room until I said, human beings die. I then continued to say to them that I had come to speak to the human beings that do the work of policing. There was an immediate sense of relaxation in the room, as the attendees realized that I had come to talk to them as persons and not as employees or police officers.

In a similar manner, I address people in the banking profession, teaching profession, medical profession, nursing profession, etc. These are not professionals or employees, as we like to refer to them. These are all human beings, who are engaged in a particular profession or line of work or who are employed by an organization or company. When we forget to put human concerns first and foremost, we do ourselves and humanity a disservice.

I have a Judeo-Christian belief system, so I embrace creation (intelligent design) from a faith perspective and, consequently, I believe that mankind is the pinnacle of God’s creative process. However, the reality is that, in this dispensation (time), man has no access to the infinite or eternal. Everything, therefore, is limited: time, resources, energy, information, emotional expression, understanding, wisdom, creativity. While I subscribe to the ‘abundance mentality’, I also understand that I am running out of time and everything associated with it.

So how do I help my fellow man and leave a positive deposit before my time is up? The answer has been clear to me for years, but I have not had the clarity of purpose or steadfastness of will to pursue the goal of sharing my insights and understanding and therefore making my contribution, however big or small. That ends with this book. We all have a contribution to make and, if the motive for making a contribution is to help your fellow man in some small way, then I think that is a good motive. To those of you who flattered me by asking me, When are you going to write your book?, well, here it is. This is my contribution.

Introduction

Originally I intended to title this book The High Cost of Not Living. As time went on, it occurred to me that while that label described accurately what I wanted to discuss with the reader, I was becoming acutely aware that everything in life happens only once. This is when I decided to change the title to Once.

There will forever be only one of you and one of me in the history of the universe. The unique journey each of us has in life is completely different from everyone else’s journey. However, because we have such a natural tendency to look for similarities for the purpose of group identification and a feeling of familiarity and comfort, we are deceived into thinking that someone else can experience the same thing we experience. At the outset, I am going to emphasize that this is an impossibility! In the Bible Solomon writes, in the Book of Ecclesiastes, that there is nothing new under the sun. In the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, verse nine, we find this statement by Solomon, What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. (NIV)

I understand (I think) the intention of the author, which was to convey to the reader that the situations we find ourselves in as human beings tend to be similar and repetitive and so, thousands of years ago, people made promises and broke those promises. So, expect that in these days people will make promises and break promises. There were disagreements and disputes and, then there was reconciliation—then and now. People fell in love and got married, had families and had to learn to live together in communities—as we do now. I can go on and on with examples of situations that have been written about, good and bad, from the beginning of the history of man, and we would see similar situations today. So the situations are not new.

In group therapy, we try to point out to the participants that what is most personal is most universal. This helps the participants to identify with others and develop cohesiveness, which is an important dynamic for group therapy success. But again, all experiences are unique to the person experiencing them and can be described approximately but not accurately enough for anyone else to experience it the same way.

Why is this important? Well, within the context of interpersonal dynamics and social interaction, there is a strong drive to identify with a group, to be a part of a group, and loners and others are noticed and singled out for comment. There is pressure to be a part of a family, a group, a team, a lodge, a church, a fraternity, a sorority, a political party, an ethnic grouping or some organization or entity. We call this peer pressure when referring to teens but peer pressure has no age limit. I am convinced that we were designed (it is a part of our DNA) to be social, and we know that the benefits of good relationships improve length and quality of life. Yet, I do not think we have paused long enough to reflect on the uniqueness and newness of each interaction in each passing moment. Consequently, we do not enjoy what the moment has to offer because we have not declared it to be special. And do not forget, each moment, once it passes, will never pass again. Everything happens once; nothing happens twice.

This is what I intend to show in this book. I wish to share with the reader the wonderful opportunities that present themselves anew, each moment of each day and how being aware of this puts us in the position of optimizing the limited time we have here on earth and making each moment come alive with boundless possibilities. I shall share from my readings, my accumulated knowledge and my life experiences. I will also share the amazing interactions that I have had with people in various stages of development in life, who have trusted me to help coach them along to a better quality of life and to whom I am most indebted.

Living Versus Not Living

I mentioned earlier that I originally intended to call this book The High Cost of Not Living. At this point, it is important for me to establish my fundamental concept of what living is and what not living is. Many times in casual social greetings, when we ask someone, how are you? the reply is, great, or I’m good, or I’m okay, or I’m just trying to make the best of the day, or I’m struggling along. All of these and others are supplied automatically without much thought and are reflections of reactivity, not intentional, careful evaluation.

This is the only life we have! It is getting shorter as we speak, think, do, etc. It is getting shorter! That is the reality of the finiteness of life. There is no reaching back in time to redo or to fix what was done or what was broken. Not that we cannot fix broken things, relationships or situations, but that has to occupy the present, which is always now when we could have been using the time to continue to build and improve. We cannot be in the instant before now or in the instant after now, the only time we are ever in is now, and this is a lifelong reality.

Perhaps the most challenging concept for human beings to grapple with is the illusion of having more time. It is also the greatest deception that the human being has to acknowledge and come to grips with. Because we can remember four weeks ago, and we can plan for four weeks in the future, we are fooled into thinking that we have access to that extended eight-week period of time. Not so! Everything has to be done now, and the mind’s ability to see beyond the now is a virtual representation and not a temporal reality. There is never more time, always less time. The ability to imagine moments, hours, days, months and years into the future, along with the capacity to reminisce about things and events of the recent and long-term past, give