Time, an imagined concept that we all wish we could have more of in our lives. It never feels like we have enough time to spare. Always needing to jump from task to task it feels as the old saying goes, “there is never enough time in the day”. The truth is that we actually have an abundance of time, the trick is to focus our attention on where our time is best spent in each of our individual lives.
Many of us spend our hours moving through life focusing on things like work, school, kids, repeat. These responsibilities alone are enough to leave us feeling drained of every minute we have, depriving us of energy and even a few seconds to spend loving and caring for ourselves. While of course I understand the importance of these responsibilities, I can’t help but also wonder how much dead time we could repurpose to fuel more activities that give us life?
What I mean is there is so much time wasted between our daily responsibilities that we may be able to refocus this time to help us power and give life to other important tasks in our existence. In my experience, I noticed that I waste a lot of time contemplating the fact that I do not have time. Instead of using the moments that I do have to make progress toward my goals, I am instead sucked into a space of feeling that my lack of time is hindering me from completing my desired task.
This realization dawned on me as I spend time living abroad in Thailand. Somehow time just seems to move a little bit slower here, which is weird considering I am 15 hours ahead the local time back home in California. I just don’t feel rushed here. Time doesn’t seem to speed by in the same way that it does back home. Although time is still quickly passing, my body and brain somehow register it differently. No longer feeling the constant competitive speed of the rat race, I feel more at ease and in peace within myself.
Though many of us are now numb to the constant need to go and do, this is not the way life has to be. It is our capitalistic driven workforce that tells us this story but it is draining, tiring, and robbing us of all of our much needed and well deserved time. Recognizing this I have accepted that while general life responsibilities like needing to make money, eating, and securing overall survival does require a lot of time, when I focus on prioritizing these hours I feel less bound by the limitations of minutes that I do not have. So this is my new challenge for myself and whoever wants to start the journey of reshaping our relationship with the idea of time. For the next 10 days I challenge us to evaluate the ways in which we view and understand time and how we use said time.
Instead of focusing on the time we do not have, let’s try and use the free time that we do have to uplift and encourage something new within ourselves. Do you need that extra 5 minutes to write down your new business plan? Or maybe you need it to remind yourself that your existence is worth more than the hours you put in at work. More importantly, perhaps you need those minutes to simply breathe. Whatever you need for yourself, use this reimagining of time in your life to give to the deepest parts of your being because if time is an illusion, we all deserve to be pleasantly deceived.
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us”
-J.R.R Tolkien
Creative Wholeness 