Time isn’t in one space and not in another. It doesn’t pick and choose when or where to exist; it just does – doesn’t it? After all we cannot buy more of it off the shelf in a ‘24/7’, open-all-hours supermarket, choosing a larger quantity to last longer, as if it were a box of washing powder with the added bonus of buying one and getting one free, because it is already free. Time itself is fundamentally free as it wafts throughout the Universe, twenty-four hours each day, seven days each week.
Arguably, it is the space in which Time can exist that has been around for billions of years and long before time measurement existed. Therefore, it isn’t too far-reaching to suggest that Time could exist in ‘one place’ and ‘not another’, because we haven’t explored every dimension to find out if that is true. Time could well be represented in a completely different way, somewhere! And even when we get there, into another dimension, we may still be looking at our old watch having listened to its ‘tick and tock’ for as long as we can remember. It would seem ironic after everything I’ve been impressing onto you thus far, to have to then change the beat you’ve been accustomed to hearing – just when it began to sound ‘normal’!
Over the centuries, mankind has made unethical decisions about how another person uses their time. Examples are evident throughout history and continue to be embedded in the array of dysfunctional activities seen in society today. We don’t always use our time wisely and sometimes we are told what to do with our time. Time probably doesn’t realise how much trouble it causes; then again, is Time at fault or is the human race trying to find yet another misfit to blame for its lack of accountability?
Now, if you have freedom and are fortunate enough to be able to exercise your rights to live freely, you are within your rights to off-charge your time. You may be offering a product or service that will either take up your time to provide or will have already taken up your time to produce. So time is free until you need someone else’s time and then the bartering begins! You cannot transfer any of their time to your world to stockpile, because it will slip through your fingers as soon as you try to catch it. Although you can, with good time management, use your own time more efficiently by opting to use or purchase someone else’s resources. In this case you have looked to achieve more in double the time and hopefully feel half as tired in the process!
Do you remember when we discussed the word sometimes in the first section? We discovered that it is OK to trust in someone else’s expertise to help you in life, because you don’t have to do everything on your own. The division of labour represents the diverse experience available and makes the world go around. It includes everything from having your hair cut to paying a mechanic to fix your car that was in the garage seven chapters ago! Both experts are capable of improving the colour (thank goodness) when the paintwork looks a bit rusty around those edges. Maybe you paid a landscaper to erect your garden fence; you know, the one that kept falling down because you either couldn’t do it properly or didn’t have the time.
Saving the time you would take trying to do something yourself, which would take another person half the time to do (because they are trained in that field), is a sensible thing to do. You may decide you would rather use your time to do something else. The cost incurred for completing some of those activities will of course influence your decision to either pay someone else or take on the challenge of doing it yourself. Although I cannot help you make that decision I can encourage you to bring your awareness back to your perception of time as it is never too late to do so, and in doing so, you may be able to put some balance back in to your life.
We are most familiar with using a quantifiable reflection of time during our day-to-day conversation, for example using the expression ‘24/7’. We further organise our diaries in the hope that we can tag a few extra minutes on to the end of an hour – when no one is looking. Can you imagine the knock-on effect globally if we all did that; how would you know who was running late?!
Well, I wouldn’t tend to say, “I wish I had a few more years to do that”, but I may say, “I wish I had a few more hours in the day”. But do I really want a longer week? To be honest, I am not sure if another day or two in practice would solve the issues that appear to arise through not having enough time. If we did have more time, would we use it wisely and appreciate the excess time on our hands to simply do nothing, as opposed to the ‘nothing’ that needs something doing to it – just for once?
Wisdom may be perceived as something we tap into as a last resort in times of need, rather than accumulating it throughout our lives, keeping it accessible and on tap. On tap would be my own preference, using it to pre-empt an outcome so I can at least prepare, rather than simply react to the outcome when it arrived. Either way, it is never too late to wise up and appreciate the time we have – and respect the fact it can be gone in a flash.
In other words, if we cannot manage the time we have now then what leads us to believe that having more of it would be useful? On the flip side, what if we had more time to go back and finish that something off, because it will serve us or others well upon completion? If we had more time to find answers to cure all ills and more time to negotiate our way out of battles, even though the latter may only provide more time to endure its conflict, would this be a good thing?
On a lighter note, if you had twenty-seven hours in a day and enjoyed an eight-day week, would you find more time to complain that you now have to work harder and pay more tax as a result? Would you despair at the long winter nights that were already too long and seek out a new hobby, because the thought of doing nothing in the world we live in sounds far less appealing than suffering the exhaustion that accompanies doing too much? Doing too much in a short space of time is why you were wishing for more time in the first place.
No doubt many of us would fill each day with more of the same. So, the idea of having more time would make little difference to our overall wellbeing if we didn’t look to change our patterns of behaviour and consider whether we actually ran out of time, or simply tried to do too much in the time we had available.
I wanted to buy a new pair of shoes last night but I ran out of time. I ran out of time because the shop closed shortly after I left work. I left work later than I planned, but just as I was driving up to the shopping centre, the car stalled as I didn’t have time this morning to stop and get petrol as I was running late because I had to get some milk which ran out as I was making breakfast. If only I had more time I could have organised myself better and none of these delays would have happened.
The reality that I would never have had enough time to choose a decent pair of shoes after work in the first place is totally irrelevant (as shoe shopping is a time-consuming affair) but do you think, hypothetically speaking, I was trying to do too much in a short space of time and blaming everything going wrong that day on the lack of time?
If the answer is yes and I am looking to excuse myself from all responsibility for what may seem to be a set of trivial issues in the whole scheme of things (compared to seeking world peace) then I can pretty much assume that if I continued with this pattern of behaviour, then the likelihood is that nothing is ever going to be my fault! This would be an ideal time to think about what it is I keep doing that brings about a ripple of complications in my life.
Everyone will have their own example! I made this one up – except the part about shoe shopping taking so long – but take a look at a few of your own ‘out of sync’ days, that resonate with one red traffic light after another! Also, recall the days that you leave home, maybe to go to work, and you sail through one green light on to the next, as if the thoroughfare had been designed just for you. Do you ever think how unusual that is or simply accept that occurrence as being the start of a great day ahead? Would something like that engage your senses or would you not even blink an eyelid? Is green your norm in life and red, well, just the colour that inhabits an off day from time to time? Which is your norm?
Sometimes you can be a positive – cup half full – sort of person and still hit the road blocks and traffic jams, finding it difficult to manoeuvre successfully from A to B without feeling dishevelled and in need of breathing apparatus by the time you get past the front door at work. And why, when all you have done is to have been positive and enthusiastic to please, is this your reward?
It must be something to do with having ‘High Expectations’! Surely we set the bar too high? Clearly, we are just not managing them very well, that’s all. No one said how high to set them in the first place when it relates to our own life. Nonetheless someone somewhere says, “Jump”, and if you are on the ball you reply, “How high?” How high to jump isn’t really the issue! How much time you have in order to jump that high and return to the ground unscathed is where you could do with focusing your attentions.
Running out of time is something we fear. We are more likely to set ourselves up for a fall that will not promise a comfortable landing, when we turn our attention to getting as much done as possible without anticipating how the end will pan out. This is especially true if we continue to sprint through life at such speed. Speed limits need to be enforced!
Instincts can pull us back when we are going too fast but that in no way infers that we listen to them. We frequently ignore the signs they have to offer, which is what they are, but whether we don’t want to believe they exist, feel embarrassed to think outside the box or have become arrogant and think we can beat time, only you will know your own mind. Your experiences in life will speak volumes.
It would be interesting to see if you are one of those people who choose to accumulate wisdom en route, developing it over time so its culmination becomes your guide so that your intuition serves you well. Maybe you choose to dial it up when a threat is imminent and hope it will answer favourably, knowing full well that you haven’t taken the time to keep in touch but still expect the same level of service!
Deciding whether you are that red or green type of person isn’t a clear reflection on your desire or ability to be positive at all. It is a reflection on your relationship with the word time and what you expect from yourself as well as what you expect Time to be able to deliver. You could be positive that you will have enough time – but that doesn’t mean that you will!
Surely Time isn’t going to deliver anything for you on its own. Time is the resource. You allocate the time you need to fulfil your quest: a minute to think, an hour to exercise, a day to shop, a week to study, a month to land a new job, a year to grieve, a decade to run your car into the ground before you can afford a new one… and a lifetime dedicated to understanding and respecting the silent and unseen laws that hold us all together by a thread of divine intervention. If you continually abuse Time and expect it to deliver the impending results at the same speed that your brain or imagination drums them up in the first place, you are not taking this ‘Time’ thing seriously.
We have established there is no time to borrow. Money will buy you someone else’s time for a task to be carried out to save you considerable time to put to better use elsewhere. This is just business as usual. This isn’t anything to get excited about but how many of us are prepared to share the credit? Not everything comes at a cost and if you actually ask for help, you may find that it doesn’t always come with a set of terms and conditions, just a token of appreciation will suffice.
Avoid squeezing all the energy out of yourself in one go. The precious life energy inherent in all of us either lies dormant or quite frankly runs out too fast. Then you struggle to top it up again to that minimum line that allows you to function efficiently running the risk of burn-out. Try not to focus all your energy each day on just getting by and, instead, make your life your own individual thoroughfare with your own set of traffic light controls – now wouldn’t that be the icing on the cake!
The quantity versus quality conundrum is an integral part of everyday learning. Let’s face it, it happens to all of us. Packing so much into each day may give rise to nothing being achieved as well as it could. You may not even recall the moments or the feelings you had with your encounters. You may have missed out on beautiful moments with people by not fully listening to what they had to say, missed the point, said you will come back to them but never do, promised something you couldn’t deliver and all because you thought you had to go faster so that you packed more in to the time you had.
Something has to give eventually, don’t you think? I am not implying it always does and someone somewhere will prove this concept wrong. Then I will be there to say, “Well done”, asking, “What do you know that millions of us around the world do not?” Then in the next breath, I would suggest he or she bottles the advice and sets up a multi-level marketing company. Naturally, I would implore that person to take me on as the first distributor! However, compromising on quality may lead to compromising on your health, happiness, contentment in life, relationships and financial stability.
I think the message I am aiming to convey here is to simply be mindful about your own capability to achieve something in a suitable timeframe, without constantly draining your battery beyond repair. Otherwise you could find yourself falling into a wormhole. Apart from that being something that could involve insect larvae, and goodness knows what else, it is also thought to be something that connects sections of spacetime together. And I think it is synonymous with what is happening with your train of thought as you are temporarily stuck in the middle of red and green, and amber is colouring your day.
Establish yourself as a positive, pragmatic individual who is actively visualising green as the new you. It was all go-go-go but you got caught up in the excitement and fell into the trap of trying to do too much; then the go-go-go went to slow-slow-slow and the slow turned into a stop and created a traffic jam. The red, apart from resembling a seething colour of despair causing vascular constriction and your blood pressure to rocket sky high, is now reflective of a warning light that has indicated that things have not gone quite as planned. It is just like an oil indicator light flashing in the car, shouting “Hello, hello” in Morse code. It quietly offers you protection but only you can heed its advice, if you are not too busy. It is likely to be telling you to recharge your batteries and stop pushing on the accelerator!
Well, we have come to the end of this sandwich with no more left than a crumb trail for you to refer back to, once you’ve digested this filling enriched with goodness. Time is precious but every day you get another opportunity to have more of it, so don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t meet all of your expectations today. Look on the bright side: tomorrow you can start the clock, all over again, to see if the next twenty-four hours will be any more productive…
P*A*T*I*E*N*C*E
It’s Not the Speed That Counts!
Patience sat quietly and meditated in the garden, appearing to have all the time in the world – even when it didn’t. It only needed a moment of silence to realign and feel composed before being recalled for duty.
Sometimes, keeping up with the demands that came in from every direction felt like hard work. This wasn’t because Patience couldn’t cope with the volume of requests; it was happy when its pager was going off, taking that as a sign of a world becoming more attuned. Either that or people didn’t know what they were letting themselves in for when asking for Patience to turn up. No, the more challenging part for Patience was sensing the person’s expectations and then witnessing their disappointment when it couldn’t deliver. And there are reasons why Patience is not always enough. It cannot always transcend your own limitations.
There were people, nearby, who genuinely seemed desperate for Patience to show up and help them through troubled times. Caught up in the realisation that they didn’t possess any, and coupled with a longing to locate some as fast as possible (as if it was something that could appear instantaneously), demonstrated to Patience that they were becoming more self-aware. Actually, there was no re
ason why Patience couldn’t suddenly enter into their realm of consciousness and begin its usefulness without a person having to undertake months of training and practice first. Just by tapping into their emotional toolkit to look for a source of guidance to help them cope with the events going on, while Time spun around dancing to distract, was being proactive. It only takes a tiny spark of effort to turn on the ignition and keep Patience in the hot seat until Time ceases to give its attention to whatever it was that needed support.
Then there were those who expected Patience to surface unconditionally, or so it appeared, while not really understanding what it means to be patient and often defining the word desperation less accurately. They imagined that Patience would ‘arrive’, ‘perform’ and ‘exit’, having fixed or changed something all by itself. This could suggest that Patience is seen as an external resource rather than one which is internally accessed and developed as nature intended. Then again, if it was something external we could probably buy it. Just like everything else we buy, to fix us, when we don’t have the patience to do it ourselves. Anyway, it wasn’t up to Patience to judge if desperation alone was the driving force behind one’s desire to make its acquaintance or if desperation could even be defined. It is an elastic word that can be stretched in all directions. It means something different to each of us when it is attached to changing situations which the eye can barely see and the heart may only feel.
Patience cannot be biased. It is only too pleased to work with you, not caring how you bring it into your consciousness but only that you do. We can all learn to welcome Patience on board while we sail and surf the waves of time, allowing any one of our experiences in life to further teach us something new about this respectful character in relation to ourselves.
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Patience unravelled itself from the lotus position and looked around in wonderment. It always sensed that nature knew more than it was letting on about the mysteries of life, never giving away all its secrets easily. Knowing this meant that Patience was more than happy to work overtime, in exchange for a glimpse of wisdom – especially when Nature was being expected to produce.
Emotional Sandwiches Page 11