We gotta shift this time paradigm, y’all.
I’m beginning to feel like a broken record, because I have done major posts about how we can transform our relationship with Time at least twice before (here and here), but recent confirmation has come my way that has caused me to renew my crusade. At the risk of becoming a Time Evangelist, here we go again.
I had the most amazing chat with a friend from the Congo a few days ago. He is trying to adjust to American time from African time, and it’s a huge, excruciating challenge. He laughed and said to me, “People from Africa do not care about time.” Nobody ever rushes, they do not power walk from engagement to engagement, they don’t keep a tight calendar or live by their phones or wear bracelets that tell them how many goddam steps they need to take today. He said, “You will never see an African person running. We don’t run. We stroll.” He was talking to a friend from France, and asked whether he had noticed anything strange about the time here in the States; the Frenchman held up a hand and said, “Don’t even talk to me about the time here.”
These are only the most recent friends from other lands that I have heard tell me that there is something badly wrong with our relationship with time. That it’s so easy to lose track of time, and to run out of time. They state that they have never rushed so much in their lives, and that the sheer pace of getting through the day is running them ragged – and they feel like they are constantly running behind, and are late for almost everything.
It’s running us ragged, too, but we’re so conditioned to it that we don’t notice.
Yes, I used the “c” word. Our lives are regimented from the time we’re born. We’re told to put our babies, our friggin’ little tiny babies who are so deeply in tune with the rhythms of the planet that it puts us to shame, on a damn schedule. Regular nap times, regular feeding times, regular bed times, up at the same time every morning, training them straight outa Wombtown to be regulated by the external clock instead of honoring the wisdom of their own bodies. Daycare, kindergarten, elementary school, all regulated and regimented and oh, so so very regular. Most of us even poop by the damn clock – “yep, 8:17AM every day like clockwork.” We pride ourselves on our regularity, and if we deviate from it too much we immediately think there’s something wrong.
It’s not the time, though. It’s us. Our relationship to time is effed-up, beyond all beyonds. When I give in to the dominant paradigm and allow myself to feel frantically rushed because I have so much going on in a single day, my stress levels skyrocket, my heartbeat gets all wonky, I can’t get a decent breath and I am running running running, hitting every goddam red light on the road, finding myself behind the slowest drivers on Earth, being stuck in traffic, or having other unreasonable personal delays. I curse other drivers, rage at construction, scold pedestrians, and allow the unkindest parts of my nature free-reign to make me miserable.
But when I remind myself before I start the day that as a Time Ninja I am always in the right place at exactly the right time, that I always have plenty of time to do everything I have to do, and time to spare so I can relax and recharge between appointments, it’s a whole different world. I hit every light green, I slip into steady, swiftly moving traffic and reach my destination in record time. All of my business gets conducted with effortless grace and flow, and I end up having so much time to spare that I end the day as relaxed as I was when I started it. Truth. Try it. It works.
Time is a field, not a spiral or a line or a finite thing in any way.
Time and Space are the same thing, and we know this to be true so much that we even call it The Space-Time Continuum (Space-Time to its friends). Space is getting bigger all the Time, and Time is getting bigger right along with it. Everything is expanding. So why do we feel like everything is rushing, speeding, getting shorter and smaller?
Because our dominant Time-paradigm is seriously effed-up. Time is no different in Congo than it is in Kansas. Paris, France and Paris, Iowa, are synced to the same big global clock thingy that sets the global standard. We’re all living on the same time, so it is our relationship, our feelings, and our beliefs about Time that are out of whack, not Time–I’m gonna go out on a limb and say, Time HERself. She is just fine. We just don’t have time for her.
Time is to be savored, courted, romanced, relished. She’s a Timeless Beauty, the ever-youthful Now, and yet there was nothing before Her. She came into existence at the beginning of everything, whatever that was.
If the Beginning was a word, it was probably, “Tea?”
We need a Time Detox. We’ve been abusing time, because even though we rush and run everywhere we go, we spend a lot of time surfing social media and watching television, that 95% of the time is a total waste of Time. We’re doing junk time, instant time, snack time, boil-in-the-bag time, convenience time . . . and it’s time for a Big Time intervention.
For one week, try starting your day focused on the fact–not that idea, but the actual fact— that you have bags and bags of time to do everything you have to do. Set the intention to be exactly where you need to be at the perfect time, and believe it to be true. Believe that you will arrive wherever you need to be a little early so you can relax and prepare yourself for whatever awaits you, and that it’s all effortless and graceful and restorative – and if you happen to be late, it’s because you need to be late; maybe somebody else needed some slack in their day and Time Ninja that you are, you were able to spontaneously provide that slack with grace and aplomb.
Take frequent breaks to breathe slowly and deeply; relax, slow down, and see what happens.
I will bet you a pork chop that you find you have more time than you can even believe. Maybe you will discover that you don’t need so much time vegging in front of the TV to keep your sanity because you have frequent moments reveling in the Big Time, and there is just so much more ease in your days.
If that isn’t true, well, hit me up for the pork chop. We can sit down to a nice slow cooked dinner and talk about it.