THE CONCEPT OF TIME

Probably no other complaint is voiced as often as the complaint of not having enough time. “I don’t have time to pursue my dreams or to know my dreams. I don’t have time for me, for my family and friends. Basically, I don’t have time to live my life.”

What a concept. Who created this? Clocks, calendars, day planners—do you know a single person who doesn’t live by their schedule, who isn’t run by their calendar?

What’s your relationship to time? Do you have plenty? Are you living in the natural rhythm and ease of life? Or, are you like most people, chasing your tail, never having enough time, often feeling exhausted or “pooped?”

“When I’m not buried in work, I have time, but then I don’t have the money I need. If I’m working all the time, I have money, but no time to enjoy it.” Does this sound like you?

An overscheduled life creates stress. Feeling like time is short, we keep ourselves mentally and physically very busy, trying to accomplish the impossible feat of catching up. On the other hand, too much idle or leisure time can also cause undue stress. Time has such a grip on us that we can get agitated when we have nothing to do.

Time is a man-made concept, initiated by the Mayans, the creators of calendars. Brilliant in mathematics, they were able to calculate the length of the Earth’s orbit around the sun with an accuracy of a thousandth of a decimal point, according to modern calculations. The Mayans gave each month of their calendar a special meaning and paid tribute to important days and moments. Many modern societies, on the other hand, went on to sanitize time, divorcing it from the flow of life, making it the law of the land. Our society measures time in hours, minutes, seconds, nanoseconds (one billionth of a second) and even picoseconds (if you could imagine trillions of a second). When it comes to controlling time, we are way out of control.