All my life I seemed to have some kind of obsession with time.
In my high school years it showed up as attempts to bring every book home from school to study as much as possible, and then failing to do so most nights. During that time a growing obsession with films about time travel or warps, from childhood books like a Wrinkle in Time, to the film Somewhere in Time, which I would watch when I was 16 and cry my eyes out every time, not just because the main character is from Chicago and traveling through time on my birthday June 27th. My favorite film list grew to include the original Terminator and Highlander, Heaven can Wait, and Contact.
During my adult life, it felt like there was never enough time. I was always busy and trying to do more, to fit more in. I wanted to experience many things and not waste any “time”. I moved to Spain in order to see the world. While teaching a class there, I remember watching the time clock so closely, and trying to fit so much information into every minute, always going over time allocated to the session…always rushed.
Then one day, I had a paradigm shift occur.
A paradigm shift is when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new and different way.
I had been relating to time almost like enemy, something I have to work against, in order to get further faster, to take in all I can as fast as possible because time is passing and I do not want to lose any time or waste the time.
Suddenly, I saw time as alive itself.
The current moment and my experience is life itself is unfolding right here, with information available, with preferences, guidance, and suggestions emerging in the space of time itself.
So for example, rather than watching the clock to regulate how much information to push through and how fast I need to go. Now it feels like tuning into time itself as the source of life and information.
Instead of turning away from time, trying to speed along a timeline, now it feels like pausing and turning right into time itself. It almost feels like a black hole that is filled with life and information.
What is your relationship with time? Is it a friend or foe? it is filled with resources and guidance? or empty and meaningless? a linear progression of activities or a source of life itself?