I have to come clean here – I have an addiction to time – the more I use, the more I need. It is something that I am working on – you could say that I am in time recovery!
I have been spending much of my time lately thinking a bit about the passage of time and authenticity. As we carve our way through our days and our relationships where are we showing up? As our today list grows and we check off each task, where is our attention? Are we always feeling that there is not enough time?
I was driving in the car with my daughter this weekend and a paleontologist was being interviewed on NPR. He described the lifespan of our planet as being compared to a calendar year. In this calendar homo-sapiens and recordable human history did not even present itself until the last minute of that calendar year at 11:59 on December 31st. That put things in perspective! One minute in comparison to the evolution of our planet. How many fractions of a millisecond do my musings fill?
In ancient Greece (which I suppose is not so ancient after all) there were two kinds of time. There was Chronos time, which is calendar time and is a quantitative measurement. The other is Kairos time, where movements from a deeper world or dimension find their way into our lives, where the measurement is qualitative.
It is the difference between living a life where you count your breaths versus living a life where you experience your moments.
We do have enough time. Time is where we focus our attention and it expands and contracts with our visceral experience and our internal perspective. Time shrivels up when we are anxious, stressed and overtired. Time swells when we are being authentic and connected.
It is so vital to our mind, or hearts, our nervous system, and our hormonal balance that we take a pause in our day to just drop into our body and look around.
Where are you, who is at your side? How can you show up for that person or persons? That pause could be sitting quietly with a cup of tea. It could be just a moment where we turn to our breath and pay attention to how our body really feels. Or it could be giving our child or friend a hug, looking into their eyes and listening to what they have to share.
We find our authentic self in that space between our thoughts, in that space where we see ourselves reflected in what and who we see around us. It may not always be easy, we may not always like what we see or feel – but to be authentic and to have more time, is to meet ourselves where we are and listen to the soft sweet ticking of the moment.
