Creations of Time
“Eternity is in love with the creations of time.” -William Blake
A couple of months ago, I read a musing of mine at my first open mic. A fire pit crackled in front of me, musicians tuned their instruments on the side, and toddlers bobbled between their mothers on blankets, laughing and balancing hot cocoa. The chilly air crept under my scarf, tickled my neck, and dared to numb my fingers. But I pressed on and read this small piece of writing I had chosen only moments before to share:
***
When the past is so vivid, how do we stay present?
The pull is like a tidal wave, sucking, tumbling, reversing the order of things until you do not know which way is up, which way is forward, or where the light is. We remember the past as a rearranged mass of seaweed, the most beautifully iridescent pieces shining forth and catching our memory. We move closer and they begin to wrap around our wrists as we reach for them, then our arms, then our entire torso, and lastly our throats. Our speech turns to stories of the past, recalling the good times, vilifying the bad, sharing our narrative of what we thought happened. What we don’t realize is that in an effort to control our future, we imagine we could’ve controlled our past, we could’ve changed the trajectory of events, people, actions. If we believe we could’ve shaped the past and reenvision it as the shiniest of objects to catch our fancy, we will forever be mesmerized by it, enthralled by the potential beauty. A past caught in the future of our memory palace, swimming in glass, neither here nor there, with no time and no reality but the one in our imagination. The present has no place here.
The present is in the darkest depths and the brightest sunlight at once. It is blindingly real, and makes the best of us look away because it is so raw, so immaterial. There is nothing we can grasp in the present. It slips through our fingers and minds like sand through a sieve. When we want to hold onto it, we live in the past. When we want to forget it, we move to the future. In the present is true pain, true beauty, true growth, true death. It is inescapable, yet we have been gifted with these minds that trick us into thinking we control our reality, that we may only find safety in that control. It is a falsity to think so. An illusion of the highest order. Let go, the wind whispers. Be here, the mountain states. Only now, the sun shines. Yet we choose not to listen to these wise creators, these elemental shape-shifters. Instead we employ our egos. They create a prison around us, and we hold the key. But where did we put it again? And does it really matter when we can live in the past we created? The harshness of the present, the brutality of it all, pushes us to cope by wishing, hoping, remembering, imagining. What would happen if we could just be? Would the quiet descend upon us? Would we be lost? Or found?
***
A couple sentences in, the crowd grew quiet. It felt as though time stopped. For me. For this small gathering of people. This creation of time, a small piece of writing, read aloud, suspended us all in a timeless space where nothing but that moment mattered. It felt profound because it is rare, experiencing eternity like that.
Time often feels like this elusive beast of our own creation, ticking by, measuring life, keeping us on our toes moment by moment. Yet time bends, expands, and contracts as we do. When our minds are wide open, time can feel like a vast field of grass, spread out before us for the running. Yet when our minds shut down to possibility, time can feel like it is closing in on us, pressuring us, making us smaller and smaller.
I find as long as I am in an open-minded, curious state, time feels expansive and infinite. And I am aware of the greater creator, eternity, of which Blake writes. Time, like us, emulates its true creator when it is free. But does time actually exist independent of us? Outside of our own minds, our own constructs? I believe it does. I think of it like a tool, a slinky maybe, or an accordion. It expands and contracts based on how we use it, how we think of it. Time can serve us or it can constrain us. It can be bouncy and fun, representative of eternity, or it can be tight and limited, representing our lack of imagination.
If you are feeling tight on time or like you need more of it, try one of these ideas for expanding time:
(each one can be experienced in less than 5 minutes)
Look up and notice: Many of us spend so much time head down on our phones or computers that we forget to look up. Notice all the life stirring around you. Using all 5 senses, what do you see, feel, smell, hear, taste? Be curious and notice your surroundings like a detective would.
Take 3 deep breaths: Inhale slowly and exhale slowly. Focus on your breath. For even great expansiveness and peace, close your eyes.
Put yourself in a situation where you feel small: Under a vast sky of stars, at the base of a mountain, in a sea of bodies swaying at a concert. All of these will broaden your perspective on time and your role with it.
I have found that what fuels the imagination and expands time most is a mindset of curiosity. The more curious we are, the broader our perspective and the wider our lens on the world around us. While presence feels elusive (as I describe in my musing above), it is ironically the only way to truly feel time in motion. It cannot be captured, only danced with. We do not control time any more than we control the elements. Yet, what we do control is our minds, which have the ability to control our perception of time.
Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” I have seen this in action time and again personally in my business. Using this law, we can see how time can be used as a tool to encourage more or less work within a given timeframe. I often find I do better, more focused work with a narrow time constraint. When I have too much time to dilly-dally, daydream, and procrastinate, I tend to find myself “wasting” time.
This concept of wasting time is a fascinating one to me. Coming from a generally optimistic, joyfull perspective, I believe time is never truly wasted. Every moment serves some purpose. The question is, are you using the moment you are in to serve the purpose you most desire now? Or the purpose you are called to fulfill? Or someone else’s purpose? Or to run away from purpose?
Using time in the way you deem most valuable is one way to both maximize it and transcend it. When we get in the “flow state” as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes about in Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience, we experience deep enjoyment, unparalleled creativity, and involvement in life. In essence, when we are in a flow state of deep work, we experience presence and oneness.
But much like in meditating, when we fall out of that flow state, and get caught up in the whirlwind of our thoughts, or of time, we are no longer present. Instead of using time as a tool where we are the driver, it feels rather like time is driving us. Returning to the dance analogy, if we are dancing with time, we want to be in the lead, and we want time to follow. Paradoxically this requires both holding one’s frame and releasing control. A follower cannot follow if the lead is too stiff. There needs to be a looseness, a gentle holding of space, where the follower is free to move.
A few weeks ago, my son was reading and studying Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and I had the great joy of reading the play with him and his uncle, who is teaching him Language Arts this year. In one of Macbeth’s soliloquies, Act I, Scene 7, this profound line about time leaped out at me:
“But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'd jump the life to come.”
A bank or shoal is an obstacle for a ship, and this made me see time through Macbeth’s eyes as an obstacle over which we “jump,” or cross over. In this soliloquy, Macbeth is undecided and questioning his conscience about whether to listen to his wife’s bidding and kill Duncan or not. Scholars agree “jump the life to come” likely refers to both avoiding future consequences and avoiding divine justice. When we mistakenly see time as an obstacle, rather than a tool or a dance partner, we risk “jumping the life to come” and skipping over the inevitable, attempting to “play God.” If you have read or seen Macbeth, you know how well this works out for him.
Instead, when we can step outside of the urgency of this moment to see the big picture, to hold the frame for our dance partner, time, we gain perspective, breathe a little easier, trust the grand design, and act with a bigger strategy in mind. We do not fantasize about skipping over future consequences or escaping what is to come; instead we face it head on and dance into the storm of life, rose stem between our teeth, trusting that time, in our capable heads and hands, can create beauty, meaning, life, and great joy. Rather than fearing or dreading time, we embrace it.
A final tool of the time-trade I’ll leave you with is one I heard referenced on a Rich Roll podcast in his interview with Dr. Ethan Kross. They discussed the power of temporal distancing, or mental time travel. Temporal distancing is a psychological practice of imagining how you’ll react to a current situation far off in the future in order to reduce stress. I use this practice often. When I feel stressed, or my kids are stressed, I ask, “Will this matter in 5 years?” If the answer is no (which it often is), we don’t spend too much energy worrying or stressing over it. It helps us release the reaction because we see it from a big picture perspective. If the answer is yes, we know it is a meaningful decision we are facing, worthy of deep work.
So if you find yourself in a stressful situation, just mentally time travel and ask yourself:
“Will this matter in 5 years?”
Then act accordingly. It is a great way to expand time and release pressure you may be putting on yourself.
Whatever your perspective may be on time, it is here to stay. It is a deeply ingrained construct of our culture and environment, surrounding us daily in the form of clocks, watches, and the sun. However, you get to choose how you interact with it, what you do with it as a tool to serve your purpose, and how you will dance with it each day. And the beautiful thing is that each day, each moment, you can partner with time differently, until you, like eternity, are in love with its creations.
