I find myself saying to my kids way too often that I don’t have time for this and that. No time to play. No time to look at what they are doing. No time to make the dinner they want.
Time is a precious entity. What I find really fascinating about time is that we all have 24 hours a day, and it passes us by whether we want to or not.
While the earth’s orbit around the sun and its rotation on its axis are fixed, so much of our concept of time is human-made. I saw a Trevor Noah clip where he talks about how companies use the fact that there are only two weekend days as an excuse for not providing longer weekends and days off to their employee when “weekends” are entirely humanmade!
Daylight savings time is the ultimate example of how humans manipulate time. It shows that it is entirely conceptual and we can basically change it to whatever we want it to be! Instead of listening to our bodies or to nature, we use clocks. Instead of saying, “The sun is rising later today so I’ll sleep in a little more,” we override our natural tendencies, wake up to a blaring alarm and work until after sunset.
Time is a concept I want to play around with this year. Some of it is simply prioritizing important things and fitting those into my day like meditating for stretches of time that I have considered to be “long” (e.g., 20 minute meditations) and setting a time limit for certain apps on my phone.
The other bit of time I am playing around with is much more on a magical and maybe even quantum level. I am anticipating more intergenerational and inner child healing. And maybe this is a bit too unrealistic or “out there” but I kinda want to “Neo” time – I want to be able to see the matrix of time and bend it at my will – “There is no time.”
Whether or not I end up bending time, I know it will be a worthwhile endeavor to reframe time in a way that’s beneficial to me.