Time Keeping

 

"Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out." ~Mitch Albom

I like to keep time because I believe it shows that I respect the other person’s time and I keep my word. I hate to be kept waiting, especially when the time was set by the party that is now late. It tells me they did not respect their word and time, and now they are disrespecting my time. But in some cases we have no option but to wait, and we do because we have no alternative.

Waiting is not the issue as much as how you wait is a reflection of whether you planned ahead, how active your monkey brain is and if you posses any iota of the virtue of patience. Some of my ever present waiting hacks include a watch later list on YouTube, listen later list on my podcast app, and a physical book in my bag, always. I never waste a waiting moment . . . unless there’s a sunrise or sunset to be mesmerized by, in which case I will spend the wait enthralled by nature.

But read Mitch Albom’s quote again: a fear of time running out. Something that only humans experience. Cats are never in a hurry to bathe and any time is snooze time for them. A cow, quietly resting in the shade, chewing curd, is about the most unhurried sight you will experience in nature. Don’t watch an army of ants though; they’re always in a rush to go somewhere.

Facebook keeps bringing up reminders that it is one year, 5 or 10, since you posted that, connected with that one, and so on. Are we so engrossed in the counting game that we have to be reminded lest we forget? And once we hit the one-year anniversary, we start planning for 5; can’t wait for the next milestone. Man alone chimes the hour, and soon enough, after too many birthday celebrations, we start fearing that the end is near. We get anxious that time is running out.

The real tragedy is not time running out. The tragedy is not living in the moment. Not fully experiencing the present as we live in constant anticipation of what’s next. Like a hiker who starts asking how much further to summit 5 minutes into the start and never enjoys the terrain in impatient anticipation of the summit. The time will pass all on its own with or without your clocks and calendars. But it will be up to you to add life into your minutes, hours and days by living with intentionality and presence. Refusing to go through life like a robot pacing through the motions and instead immersing yourself in the present – seeing, smelling, tasting, hearing and touching it all, intuitively. Be present now, now is the only time you have and tomorrow is never promised.

“Yesterday is already gone. Tomorrow is not yet here. Today is the only day available to us; it is the most important day of our lives.” – Thich Nhat Hanh