Time – Thankvember Twelfth

Curious?click here!

Time – Thankvember Twelfth

Time tends to be capricious, in human life. We seem to think of it, most of the time, as something concrete and easily measured off into blocks and segments of varying sizes, and then we arrange our lives as though time is an inviolable constant that exists as we imagine it.

But, just as learning is not as easily segmented into subjects, lessons, and grades as school would lead us to believe, time and life often do not yield easily to such rigid structures

Time flows. Our version of it is framed in how we choose to see our world, and time seems to mean different things in different cultures, and to diverse types of personalities.

The four people who live in this house all have differing ideas about time. This is probably not that surprising a statement to anyone who lives with either the very young or the very old, who typically function with a clearly different pace than that of the typical young to middle-aged adult…

So often, I see parents thwarted and frustrated in their plans by their childrens’ time sense. I have actually been that parent, more frequently and more recently than I wish I had been.

As an adult, I have tended to think, with the entitlement of an ingrained lifelong pattern, that my plans, and my time, trumped my children simply because I am an adult, and what I have to do is important.

The implication, of course, being that whatever they were doing or hoping to accomplish was not important – or at least not as important as what I wanted to do.

But are they any less alive than I am? Are these moments not their lives as much as mine? By what right do adults dominate and direct children’s time, as though it were theirs to order?

When these types of thoughts became persistent in my mind, a change began. It’s grown wide and deep and profound, the type of change that there is no coming back from.

Now, I own only my own time. I do not feel that I own my childrens’, and, in those moments when old patterns rise up, I am better able to recognize it, question my own behavior, and then, if need be, express what I am feeling about time and the children in a way that does not place my time above theirs.

And, in owning my own time, I have come to a place where I evaluate, nearly constantly and more and more naturally, what it is I am choosing to spend my most finite resource on, and why. More often than I might have expected, it’s because of other voices and assumptions in my head – things said and done throughout my childhood and adulthood, never before questioned…but not at all right for us and the life we live, here.

I used to spend a great deal of time with people who tended strongly toward negativity, passive aggression, outright antagonism, judgment, scorn, prejudice, and manipulation. I was related to them, and I thought that implied an iron-clad obligation to take the bad for the sake of the good. I endured more than a few hours of outright abuse, in order to keep the peace.

Learning to own and value my own time led me to question why I was doing this. Eventually, I learned to place limits and boundaries, and, when these didn’t work, I chose to use my time in connections that truly are peaceful, because all involved parties are dealing respectfully with one another.

A commute could be boring…or hugely joyful….how one sees time makes a difference.

I now spend my time in activities that bring me personal joy and fulfillment, or help to bring those things to others. I now spend my time with people who are responsible for the energy they bring to our connection, and who also own their own time.

Oddly, I now receive many comments that reference my productivity, and how much I choose to take on. Maybe eliminating all the things that filled my time without serving my purpose has left me, in effect, with several more hours in each day. Maybe I have learned better time management, as I’ve learned to own my time. Maybe those moments not spent in conflict with others have helped, too…

It’s likely a little of all of these, and more, but time brings a sense of peace and abundance for me, these days, and I am deeply grateful for its gift.