Have you ever noticed that many of us expend so much of our energy on keeping track of time? We define tasks and occurrences in terms of how much time is needed for each and whether or not it used more or less time than we had allowed for it. We wear watches and hang clocks everywhere in our homes and work places; it‘s as though we’re lost and disoriented if we don’t know what time it is at every moment of our lives. The result of all this time-keeping, however, seems to be only an increased perception of how rapidly time is “passing us by.”
The phrase, “time is passing us by” reflects some of the anxiety we feel about our use of the limited time each of us has on this earth. What we do with the lifespan allotted to each of us is, to a large extent, a matter of choice. How sad to think that many of us spend too much of our limited time fretting about what time it is and how quickly it is moving. Wouldn’t it feel so much better to focus rather on getting full value, whether from our diversions or our work, by experiencing fully each moment of every day?
An awareness that time is passing us by also seems to imply that we are passively sitting, merely watching the passage of time from the sidelines, and not actively engaged in any of the events and experiences it brings. That’s just sad, don’t you think? Again, resolving to focus our attention on living in the moment appears to be the remedy. Engagement is the key to getting full value from our allotted time.
Mindfulness, or being mindful, is the intentional practice of the awareness of your present moment and only that moment. You spend no energy on judging, reflecting, or thinking but rather simply observe this moment, right now, for what it is. You are present with no purpose except to be alert and aware of “now.” Such an attitude frees you from the emotional and mental weight of continually judging and evaluating, planning responses, or fretting about what might come next. None of it matters and none of it requires any energy of you, and so, the more you practice mindfulness the more you are refreshed and alert as your usual way of being.
Such a restful way of being might even put an end to the common, fear-inducing perception that time seems to pass so much faster as we get older. Would that still feel true if we were actively engaged in being fully present to each moment? I suspect that our persistent attention to the passage of time would become an unnecessary use of our precious energy and we would soon be free of this nasty anxiety. Can you imagine it?
I find that living in the country has inclined me to practice mindfulness a little more intentionally, although I can still feel caught in the “time crunch” fairly easily. I am trying, however, to think less in terms of “when this or that happens” and more in terms of the flow of events and my place in those events right now. It will definitely take more practice but, as I walk my country mile, I hope to become more proficient at being fully present in each delightful step.
This is an item I wrote for a website I was once part of, but that didn't work out for me the way I had hoped it would. I hope this post inspires you to think differently about time or your use of it. It's making me think a lot about something closely related: purpose. What is my purpose in life, how do I determine that, and how do I separate it from the many purposes that the world and our society imposes on us? I sense a new post brewing ... sometime soon.
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