
Hmmm, what if winning means declining to participate in the race?
I have been out of the workforce for 15 months now. People often ask me if I miss work. My answer never varies: Not at all. Not one bit! I was more than ready to hang it all up so that, as I often proclaimed, my time would be my own. But I am realizing that exercising control over time is easier in principle than in practice.
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
~ Carl Sandburg, American Poet
Sandburg makes a very good point. Time is a form of currency. And yet, I cannot take possession of it, like a coin in my hand, as much as I like the idea. There are still things I must spend some of my time on – the business of living – whether I like it or not. I have more choice about timing now. But time itself does not answer or surrender itself to me.
How often do we lament: Where did the time go? I thought I would be done with that statement when I retired. But alas, the question still arises occasionally.
Time is a created thing. To say, ‘I don’t have time’, is to say ‘I don’t want to’.
~ Laz Tzu, Chinese Philosopher
This declaration begins to get to the core of the tyranny of time. Although humans invented clocks to measure time, minutes and hours are artificial concepts that do more to enslave us to time than wrestle it into something we can exercise control over.
We really only break free of time in those rare moments when we stop observing or paying attention to it. When those precious intervals are over, we are like to declare that the time got away from me as if that is a bad thing. It should really be the ideal to which we aspire.
This time, like all times, is a good one, if we but know what to do with it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Essayist
Emerson offered a useful perspective. Instead of always fighting against time – trying to catch up to it or get ahead of it – we should try to focus on the moment we are in. After all, that is really the one thing we can exercise some control over.
Time sometimes flies like a bird, sometimes crawls like a snail; but man is happiest when he does not notice whether it passes swiftly or slowly.
~ Ivan Turgenev, Russian Novelist
Turgenev may ultimately have the best handle on the matter. Time is a relative thing – a matter of perception. If we could only stop noticing it and forever racing against it, time might really and truly become our own.
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Tags: Carl Sandburg · metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · racing against time · Ralph Waldo Emerson · timeNo Comments