Play time
I dreamt that there was no time. In the sense that time didn’t exist in that space. The weird thing was that I was aware that time didn’t exist, as if I knew about time and I just noticed just then that time didn’t exist anymore. Time did not matter. I could take 100 years to simply be, or another 300 years to dance or a million minutes to look at that pretty flower; it really didn’t matter how long or how little I took to do something because time didn’t exist. Oh, I can’t tell you how liberating that felt! So much pressure pufff, gone!
My dream makes me ponder about time. I don’t know about you but I am more and more aware of time. Did you notice that time is speeding up? Or is it just me??? The days are galloping away, the weeks are gone in a flash, the years run away with me at incredible speed. I caught myself the other day yearning for the summer holidays of my childhood – days and weeks of having to do nothing but play. I distinctly remember the days of waking up in my grandmother’s big bed with a large smile on my face – I couldn’t wait to get up, go out in the garden and play. Mind you, I was about 10 at the time, but how I miss waking up with that sense of delight! Time was so irrelevant then!
As an adult I am ever so aware of time. I play a game sometimes: I try to spend as much time as I can without checking the time, I try to get on with my daily activities as if time doesn’t matter. These are special days, I call them days to potter about. I am lucky that I can be flexible with my days and I have days when I don’t have to be somewhere or I don’t have to be time bound – so grateful for days like these! If you never have days like these please make sure you block some ‘pottering about’ time in your diary right now, believe me, it’s well worth it!
Life so often pushes us to run around the clock: must get to work on time, must get to that appointment on time, pick up the kids from school on time, take an hour to tidy up, take another hour to put dinner on the table, go to run for 30 min ( an hour if you are lucky), and so on. It’s night time before I know it; go to bed and tomorrow start all over again. The more I got to do, the faster time goes, it’s some kind of a mad chase.
So I wonder: how can I make time? How can I gain time? Who makes time and how? It didn’t take long to figure it out that it is all up to me. It is up to me to make time. I give myself permission to make time. I invite myself to make time. I figured time is precious and it is up to me to use it wisely. Sometimes I am good at spending my time in a way that nourishes me and those around me. Sometimes I am not so good and I found myself exclaiming: what a waste of time that was!
A good question I learned to ask myself is this: “is this the best way for me right now to spend my time”? The answer to this question often surprises me and makes me change my day around. The best days are the days when I have time to get lost in whatever I am doing.
Can you imagine your life where time doesn’t exist? Your life when you can do what you need to do for as little or for as long as you wish? What would you spend more time doing? What would be different? How would you feel? Right now I feel that I could take an eternity lost in the garden, smelling the roses and the honeysuckle and asking the summer wind to gently stroke me. 