Concerning Time
Posted by John Crutchfield on March 8, 2010
Following is an essay on time which I discovered the other day when cleaning out some scraps of paper in a storage space I rent…ahh…the treasures one can discover amidst what we might think is trash…Enjoy!
Something to consider when you’re mind is rattling on about wasting time…
Thank you Bente for this most inspiring piece of art!
Peace & Love
JC =0)
Wasting Time Exquisitely
by
Bente Mirow
Once upon a time, long ago, people controlled time.
Once upon a time now, time controls people.
In the Then, people could make time stand still – or make it flow with their own rhythm.
In the now, Time is our master. It rules us with a firm hand, keeping us trapped in its’ demands, while our time managers keep us in line so that we never forget what we must do next.
When time belonged to the people, they filled it with frivolous play and time became the present moment. The more they did so, the smarter they were considered and the smarter they knew they were becoming.
As the people became slaves of the time they counted, they lost the Now and the playing associated with now became a “waste of time” – filled with guilt…with an awareness of what one could or should be doing.
As if we could ever waste our time.
There is no such thing as wasting time; it cannot be wasted. It is not for us to waste or throw away, but only to live in, live through and experience.
So once upon that time long ago, the people knew how to play. And work was playful, as life was not divided into work as opposed to play.
In our time work and play have become loaded with opposite symbols – work=negative, play=positive. The tension between the two seems to increase rapidly as the electronic age enables us to do so much more in so much less time. We run like rats in a never-ending spinning wheel, never stopping to check where we are, where we are going or why we run.
Four centuries ago, a belief system started to emerge based on the idea that human beings’ ultimate purpose was to work. Work became a duty, and such work was measured in time. As we cannot play out of duty, it became a sin and a waste of time and money to play.
Slowly, over time, people re-defined the meanings of time and work. As work was transformed from the life we live to the time we get paid, the measurement of time worked determined the value. The measured time was transformed to an economy, running us all, as the yardstick of our lives’ worth.
As the minutes are counted and slipping into the past, our every effort or activity is directed toward the production of something or nothing, around the clock, by people everywhere – Work.
But in the grey zone, full of light, exists the exception – when a person’s work is also a calling, and the measuring of its’ time makes no difference in the effort spent. When work aligns within a person as his or her calling, Time evaporates as the work is done according to its’ own merit. The personal calling allows time and work to blend, as a life lived. Definitions blur and become unnecessary as the calling allows the blissful state of play in the Now to swallow measures and yardsticks, leaving them as empty shells devoid of meaning.
So once upon today, people know how to work. We define our life activities as work: relationships are ‘hard work’, giving birth is a ‘job’, cooking is a ‘chore’.
When we evaluate our time as spent well or poorly, efficiently or wastefully, we are applying our own value system to the activities with which we fill our time and life.
Perhaps each of us can change the value of our time by simply re-defining our value system. Each time we cook, we can consider it a calling – a work of art to design, execute and present to perfection-our perfection. Each time we do the dishes, we can experience it as a cleansing ritual, allowing us time to breathe and touch the tools of our private art studio-our kitchen.
We can make our work a calling and our life a play. Developing an awareness of what we do and an ignorance of the time it takes. Everything takes the time it needs, Now.
We can shift our attention and think of the pauses in between the notes where the music happens as applied to our lives. The moments you are engaged in nothing (or nothing of apparent ‘value’) – playing or being, are when your thoughts go to work all by themselves and send you signals of insights, peace and compassion. Not a new thought by any stretch, yet how many of us apply such knowledge?
Time belongs to us in such moments, the one and only Now, and such moments are pregnant with potential for personal bliss. So why not waste time deliciously and exquisitely and call it neither work nor play, but Life?
As James Walker once said: “Counting time is not so important as making time count.”
Comments
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I love that, thank you for sharing and affirming that what we do is never a waste, but just living our lives.
Great site. A lot of useful information here. I’m sending it to some friends!