Time is On Your Side

We should all find activities in life that cause us to lose track of time and, more importantly, to not worry about what we “should” be doing with those precious moments.

 In our daily lives, we are controlled by the clock.  From the time we have to go to work to the time we are allowed to eat, and the time we can rejoin the freedom of life yet again.  Time can be an all-controlling factor if you let it, but it does not have to be. You can live your life in your own time.

My Thoughts on Time

In reality, time is an invention of man to measure how we are doing in life. Our entire lives are run on time, from when we start our education to when we retire and every facet in between.

Yet what is time but an arbitrary agreement between us all that how long it takes the sun to move around the sun in a year? The time that it takes for the Earth to spin on its axis constitutes a day. Would the workweek be longer if it took more time to journey around the sun?  Would we need less sleep if the day was shorter?

Really time is an agreement among all people on how we should measure our lives, and measure we do.

Getting Off Track with Time

For myself, when I am totally engrossed in an activity, there is a suspension of this arbitrary rule of time.  Whatever activity I have been doing must be my complete focus.  Not a part of my focus but the whole thing.

Writing to me becomes this many times.  Leave all other thoughts behind and commit to the task of capturing a thought.  There is no thought about what I am doing next or what has happened before but only the thought of the words and the page’s expression.

The time fades, and the thoughts continue to express.  Yet this is not the only time I have experienced timelessness.

Finding the Timelessness Each Day

This is really a difficult thing to do, but shouldn’t there be a moment during each day when time really doesn’t matter? I have found this in different places over the course of my life.  Meditation is a great one.

I currently have about 15-20 minutes dedicated to this.  Since I am relatively new at meditating, I am always shocked when you achieve clearing your mind, and time really doesn’t matter.  It still exists, but it doesn’t apply to that activity.

 I do not set the alarm, but that time seems to pass quickly, sometimes like a second or two. When you lose your awareness of something, does it matter?  This is definitely a time where I lose track of time.

When you achieve mindfulness in any activity, then losing track of time is a consequence.  If you are worried about finishing what you are doing and then doing the next fifteen things on a list, then there is no way you will lose track of time.

In fact, the time’s awareness will allow you to feel that you don’t have enough time.  That is just a perception because time doesn’t really exist anyway.  When I focus on the task at hand and experience what comes with it, I can lose track of time.

Love Of Course Takes Time

As anyone who has experienced the pangs of love will know, time does not seem to exist the same as it does anywhere else.  I believe that is because your entire being would not rather be anywhere else but fully engrossed with the object of your affection.

 How many days have you spent that moved by quickly in the experience of love?  Yet as you recall them later, you can remember each part of the experience?  How they smiled, how their touch felt? How much you just loved being with them?

These feelings are definitely the times in life that I have lost track of time.  Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to keep these moments and to make every day like that.  I am told that some can do it. I had only had a few fleeting moments in life when I lost in the moment with love.  They were good moments.

Conclusion

When you can focus completely on what is happening in your life, time becomes less important, and you are apt to lose track of it.  I know there is a time for all things, yet I think that much of the magic of life occurs when we stop keeping track of time and just let things happen as they should. Focus on the moment at hand, not the hands-on clock.