Time can be wasted

Sitting in the darkness, listening to the breath of the boys when they are falling into sleep, and the “click, click” sound of the little clock in the room. I was almost sure my head is quiet and my thoughts are empty, there emerges the concept of the "time" and my “time complex”.

The timeless "Now"

For 2-3 year old children, there seems to be only one concept of time - “Now”. Everything belongs to either “now” (their favorite box), or “not now” (mummy and daddy’s favorite box). Anything “not now” is simply equal to “not existing”. I spent the whole year time, finally managed to reason with Soren why he can not eat the ice cream now because he just ate one; and why he can not open the gift now because his birthday is tomorrow. But now, Mikkel is right in the stage of insisting on “NOW”. I’ve long lost my logic in trying to answer their question of “Mummy, why not now?”. And sometimes, some part of me did feel a little bit envy- how wonderful it is to be a child, who lives just for NOW. I’ve also been like that. But since when I have lost my affection and persistence with “now”? Knowledge, concepts, planning, and structure… the power of education has numbed my senses of the “now”.

How much of our time when we are awake is actually spending on what is happening now instead of thinking of what has happened or making plans about what is about to happen? If we turn to the various spiritual leaders, it won’t be difficult to discover that the power of NOW is at the center of most their teaching.

The length of time

Why do we spend so much time analyze the past and plan the future rather than really focus on now? Is it because we don’t want to forget about the past, or is it because we have too much ambition for future and too much unbearable uncertainty that it’s anxiety provoking if we don’t have plans to cover tomorrow? Especially when we enter the middle-age. The sense of urgency has never been so strong. Time is never enough for what we want to achieve, and a day feels shorter and shorter when we grow older and older. What had happened? Perhaps I can borrow the “theory of relativity” for entertaining the mind a bit: for my 4 year old boy, the length of a day feels like 1/365x4. And for me, the length of a day feels like 1/365x39. Therefore, no wonder the day feels shorter for an adult than a child. Humans are after all the animals of “experience”. Perhaps only when we are connected to that inner child, looking at everything around us with the newborn-like curiosity, and only when we honor our actions with true passion and heart-felt devotion, a day in our life will then feels longer, because of the quality and vitality we’ve lived through at each moment.

Time can be wasted.

But what shall we do now to best utilize the time? To children, there is no such a thing called “waste of time” as they simply follow their heart. And what can be more legitimate than doing the things heart-felt to do? Yet when our brain grows bigger, our actions start to follow our master-like minds. We invented many sorting boxes in the concept of time: what belongs to “time well-spent”, what belongs to “time wasted”. So we try to improve our efficiency… meetings, plans, reports, emails, presentations… once we feel that we are behind the to-do list, our companies send us to the “time management” courses – how to do more with less time, improve the efficiency… Till, one day we lost all the appetite in the “busy-ness”, we try then to re-invent ourselves, reset, delete, retreat… Yet we human can not afford not being busy. Before long we are restless again if we didn’t do anything significant. Our value-driven mind has long got used to prioritize according to the criteria of value generation. Take a walk, listening to a song, writing a blog or diary, cooking, meet some good friends, playing with kids, or just do nothing and chill… Those that don’t directly produce value end up always at the bottom of the list, so much so it becomes a never fulfilled wish list. Then our self-deception begins: “I just need to work harder, more efficient, have more done, so that I can finally afford to have spare time to do those things on the wish list”. Yet there is never “spare time” in this race with the time… The problem is not the efficiency. The real problem is the boxes invented by our mind, and the sorting definition what belongs to “waste”, what belongs to “valuable”.

Then one day, perhaps for many of us only after many lessons life teach us such as burnout, depression, or the loss of our beloved ones, we finally give up our struggles with “doing nothing”, completely accept it, embrace it. In a status of non-resistence, in those slow-downed moments, we start to love it, love the feeling of being at peace and at ease, love the gratitude instead of greediness, love that clearer vision what matters and where our path lies. So we began, light and firm steps...

Laotz is right – action through non-action, when one is at his most naturalness, the action flows at one’s accord. And Glasl is also right with his “theory of U”, which I will interpret as keeping the heart open to listen, to observe and to feel, tap into that pre-knowledge or intuition from our deepest source and act upon any opportunity that may emerge from the moment…

So I will say that “time can be wasted”. Park the busyness and embrace the nothingness; Give yourself a bit heart nurturing time and space. Do something that we usually don’t have time for but want to yet ended up always at the bottom of the list. Or just enjoy the time of doing nothing, just being there, being you... Sometimes when we thought we are in regression, the truth is that we are just preparing for progress.

Some time ago, I read a small note somewhere. It says that the creator is fair. All the living beings such as elephant, whale, turtle, frog, or human, no matter how different they can live in terms of time-defined “years”, all the living being’s average lifespan is about 1.5 billion heart beat. Hence, to all the animals, their sense of time is same.

Maybe I will still tell my children “don’t waste time”. But I will also tell them, that the only way to judge whether the time is “wasted” or not, is listening to the voice from their heart.

#Time