You Cannot Kill Time!!
October 20th 2006 11:08
"I'm a slave to time." "I can't stand it when I waste time." "We're just hanging out, killing time." "So much to do, so little time." And the proverbial, "If I could put time in a bottle".
So many people experience time as if it were a precious commodity that has the power to make or break our will, our capacity to enjoy, and our liklihood to succeed (whatever it is that that may look like). Time stress seems to be a uniquely human event, and one that has the potential to result in many unfortunate and often-times unanticipated consequences.
Does time have power over people? Or, do people have power over time? As if the decision to waste time is a legitimate personal choice. Do we do time, or do we simply occupy this human contruct that we call time?
I am well aware that the sun goes up and the sun goes down, and that time is based on such naturally occuring activities. Yet, we humans with our 'abstracting' brains, have given a whole other layer of meaning to the notion of time. No longer is it so easy just to be in the moment and experience what some would call the 'participation mystique' of being alive and fresh and totally absorbed in what is occuring right here right now.
So much angst relative to people feeling like they are wasting time. When I ask people to break this notion of wasting time down to understandable terms, it usually reduces to expectations and what a person has identified as "needing" to be accomplished. As long as the expectation is not being met, then time is 'wasted'.
I feel bad for those who do this to themselves, because it often includes anxiety that reduces rather than increases the quality of effort put into whatever it is that is the task at hand.
I am not certain that it is possible to waste or kill or do anything else to time. Time just is. I like to suggest that our activity can exist in the moment, or it can be dedicated to the future. However one likes or needs to lay it out, time does not change.
Time, as they say, keeps on moving, moving, moving, into the future. We humans have a drive to perform, and we have a need to rejuvenate by using down time. Often, the down time is denigrated as frivolous 'killing' of time. Either way, whatever we do does not change the notion that time will move on unchanged by our activity.
YOU CANNOT KILL TIME!
You are not that powerful. You can choose to be in time by being active, restful, or something else in between. It seems to me that a mindset whereby humans can have 'dominion' over time is as faulty as the mindset that humans can truly have dominion over nature. Don't think it is truly possible, at least for the effective long term.
WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH 'TIME'
deorre
So many people experience time as if it were a precious commodity that has the power to make or break our will, our capacity to enjoy, and our liklihood to succeed (whatever it is that that may look like). Time stress seems to be a uniquely human event, and one that has the potential to result in many unfortunate and often-times unanticipated consequences.
Does time have power over people? Or, do people have power over time? As if the decision to waste time is a legitimate personal choice. Do we do time, or do we simply occupy this human contruct that we call time?
I am well aware that the sun goes up and the sun goes down, and that time is based on such naturally occuring activities. Yet, we humans with our 'abstracting' brains, have given a whole other layer of meaning to the notion of time. No longer is it so easy just to be in the moment and experience what some would call the 'participation mystique' of being alive and fresh and totally absorbed in what is occuring right here right now.
So much angst relative to people feeling like they are wasting time. When I ask people to break this notion of wasting time down to understandable terms, it usually reduces to expectations and what a person has identified as "needing" to be accomplished. As long as the expectation is not being met, then time is 'wasted'.
I feel bad for those who do this to themselves, because it often includes anxiety that reduces rather than increases the quality of effort put into whatever it is that is the task at hand.
I am not certain that it is possible to waste or kill or do anything else to time. Time just is. I like to suggest that our activity can exist in the moment, or it can be dedicated to the future. However one likes or needs to lay it out, time does not change.
Time, as they say, keeps on moving, moving, moving, into the future. We humans have a drive to perform, and we have a need to rejuvenate by using down time. Often, the down time is denigrated as frivolous 'killing' of time. Either way, whatever we do does not change the notion that time will move on unchanged by our activity.
YOU CANNOT KILL TIME!
You are not that powerful. You can choose to be in time by being active, restful, or something else in between. It seems to me that a mindset whereby humans can have 'dominion' over time is as faulty as the mindset that humans can truly have dominion over nature. Don't think it is truly possible, at least for the effective long term.
WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH 'TIME'
deorre
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Comment by Damo
Comment by Angelika
You know, have a watch in my purse for when I'm meeting someone, but not let time dictate my life at home.
I think that will be nice.
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
One of my favourite subjects infact ... time has mesmerised me for centuries ...
I think we feel we are wasting time when we pursue anything to the point of obsession, because it robs us of our absorption intto the now experience of time. Yet time spent in obsession has a time too, slower perhaps .... Yet in the 'now' we are subject to everyone elses time too ..... hmmm ... who was it that said;
Man says time is passing,
Time says man is passing ...
Ever noticed how all these 'time saving devices' take up more time than ever?
now I have run, as I am once again, out of time ....
Lilla
Comment by Deorre
Stress Alive
Man Lessons
Most sadly is when life becomes so fettered by time stress that the focus and obsession becomes toxic.
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
...what do you mean '...the timed obsession becomes... toxic?'
Lilla...
Comment by Deorre
Stress Alive
Man Lessons
When nearly every moment of ones' day is polluted by worrying if there is enough time, and that worry becomes not only an mental but an emotional and physical experience, I call that toxic. Quite sad and degrading of life, I say.