Time is Not on My Side

For something so hard to hold, Time certainly is powerful!

I’ve been reading “The Power of Now” again. Eckhart Tolle has much to say on the subject of Time and I’m still early in the book.  He talks of how we get caught up in psychological time.  Though we might have to live within “clock” time, we take it way too far.

Time claws at me from behind, reminding me of all the time I’ve wasted.  And it cackles from the future, taunting me to move faster.  Time is always there to demand I go there, or do this.  What exactly am I doing with my time?  I would venture to say Time is at the heart of most stress.  It’s so hard to make it do what you want.

So, how do we step aside and let time tick by without being so attached to it?

Perhaps, like most things, it‘s about controlling the thoughts.  It’s not really time’s fault, after all.  You can’t blame the clock. The time is what we’ve decided it is:  2:47 pm, Eastern Standard Time. But it’s all the thoughts that gather around it which cause such stress and angst.  The judgments that can spew forth!

I wonder if I can practice releasing the thoughts, the stress, the anxiety about time?  At the moment it’s literally hours before I have to note the time.  Can’t I just let go and be in the now?  At least for the next few hours? 

It feels almost impossible to escape it. I have had fantasies about going to sleep when I’m tired, getting up when I’m rested, eating when I feel hungry. Instead of being such a slave to the clock.  Even at times in my life when I could do that (with no particular place to go and no particular time to be there) I still couldn’t do it.  I can’t even do the “it’s 5:00 somewhere” game.  I’m just so locked into the structure of time (except for a fondness for having breakfast for dinner).

I know well the value and peace, as well as all that can be done in the now.  That means gaining control over my addiction to psychological time.

Stay tuned ~