The Finlay Moss Five Minute Rule

The Finlay Moss Five Minute Rule

After forty years of mental health problems and twenty years of intense medication, Finlay Moss’s self-motivation is non-existent; his “get up and go” has truly “got up and gone”, having long since packed its bags and left for sunnier, more productive climes, leaving behind it just one of many voids in Finlay’s mental constitution.

Empty spaces aside, one factor in Finlay’s favour, however, is his stubbornness, as evidenced to a lesser degree by decisions such as a refusal to learn how to use a smart phone but to a far greater degree by a grim determination that his illness will not beat him.  In order to keep his wheels turning Finlay has, of late,  been relying on what he likes to call “The Finlay Moss Five Minute Rule”, sub-dividing his life into (hopefully) manageable segments of an unseen, insurmountable whole,  in similar fashion to exponents of the “elephant technique”, a way of thinking which looks at a particular task (cleaning the bathroom for instance) as if it were an elephant but then dealing with said pachyderm one body part at a time (the trunk for the toilet, the head for the bath, the left forelimb for the sink, and so on).

Finlay’s coping mechanism straightway rules out the image of an elephant as its presence in the room merely results in his being crushed, defeated before he can even begin.  In Finlay’s view the (arduous) job of cleaning the bathroom does not exist.  Instead ‘cleaning the toilet’ is a five minute segment in its own right, likewise the sink, the bath, the bathroom cupboards, etc; all distinct from one another and not necessarily carried out at the same time or even on the same day.

Just to be clear, “five minutes” is not an exact three hundred seconds; Finlay wasn’t quite that anal, having never once been fixated by his (or anyone else’s back passage), be it psychosexually, developmentally or otherwise.  As I said, this is not an exact science; one segment may constitute four minutes and sixteen seconds, while another may be five minutes and forty-seven seconds.  Some, doing the washing up for instance, may even require two or more five minute segments combined together.

Finlay uses his technique as a way of both helping him start a task and also as a measurement of his achievements and thereby of his own well being.  A day where just one five minute segment is accomplished means a day not entirely lost to the dark abyss that is his mental illness.  The completion of two or more segments (be they separate or conjoined) is even better, although the distant dream of twelve segments in a day is simply that; a distant dream.  Unknown to Finlay that dream can never be realised; God, fate or the cosmos, whomever or whatever you wish to call it, is about to spring a “five minute rule” of its own.

 For now Finlay’s task list includes such things as dusting the telly and the stereo, five minutes; cleaning the kitchen worktops, five minutes; vacuuming the dining room carpet, five minutes; vacuuming the living room floor, five minutes; loading the washing machine, five minutes; changing the litter in the cat’s litter tray, you guessed it, five minutes.  (Ever wondered how much of our precious landfill is taken up by second hand kitty litter, and then wondered if there should be a way of recycling it instead? Finlay had, and, let me assure you, for far longer than five minutes.  Anal? No.  Mildly obsessive? Oh yes.)

So there you have it; “The Finlay Moss Five Minute Rule”; sadly for Finlay his improved way of thinking is about to be made redundant.

Five minutes from now his mother will ring and they will spend the customary five minutes mouthing the usual niceties.  Five minutes after that Finlay will leave the house and take the leisurely five minute walk to the bus stop where he will arrive five minutes before the bus is due but then have to wait five frustrating minutes longer for his late-running bus to arrive.  Five minutes into the journey a group of “young people” will board the bus and spend five minutes shouting, laughing and swearing until the old lady sitting next to Finlay takes them to task.  The ensuing argument will last five minutes at which time a scuffle will break out and, in protecting his fellow passenger, Finlay will be knifed in the chest. 

The alarm raised, it will take five minutes for the police to arrive and a further five minutes for an ambulance crew to join them.  The next five minutes will be spent stemming the flow of blood from Finlay’s chest; five minutes later he will be loaded into the ambulance for the five minute journey to the hospital.  Upon arrival it will take five ultimately futile minutes to resuscitate him.  Five minutes later Finlay will be dead, his life force, or his soul if you prefer, having, much like his prior self-motivation, truly “got up and gone”.

Oh, by the way, how long did it take me to read this story?  You guessed it….

copyright DM Pamment 16/8/16