(from the Timefish Chronicles)
Time
to stop blaming it on not having the time.
We say we are so busy, we can't.
Why are we so busy?
What are we so busy doing?
Getting to the next thing!
Then, there where we are are going, it will surely be good..
Who do we want to do it with?
Lots and lots of people we don't know, apparently.
We stand together with them in line, on line, in traffic, as we wait to do what we say we would rather do. We carefully maintain distance, standing apart as we stand together.
In the little private sealed tubes of our precious attention, we snake along, staring down at our personal handheld glowing devices, intertwining in the writhing masses we form. Snaking, waiting; waiting, snaking...
We stagger along through time, seeking moments of fulfillment, not realizing that peaks are by topical definition, exceedingly rare. For every peak experience, achievement or thrill, there must be a mountain of patience as the foundation.
My friend Saturn is my teacher in so many things. As a young person, she was a bike messenger in the big city for a while. Biking everywhere growing up, she was skillful and fast.
But she decided to impose a tax of her own creation on the big city when she started the low paid, toxic, dangerous job.
She decided to *take* her time. Every single delivery, from day one, she took a side trip. That would be the deal. A break in time to learn, explore, sit, play, eat, meditate, anything whatever.(The messenger service either never noticed or didn't mind.)
We can share time, but when someone "gives" you time, something is usually wrong. It is often a power imbalance. Like freedom, time is yours, but it must be taken.
"I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind." – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I wonder if it is better to close our eyes and meditate, than to entertain most of the silly
thoughts we run around chasing with our attention. More often now, silly things are chasing our eyeballs and running us around on our hand held trance inducers. (Who do you think you are stealing yourself away from, slave?)
"Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?" – David M. Bader
Taking time is good.
There are holes everywhere in time.
Slow down! You can carve out windows in time, and do a different thing than your usual thing. Look up from the writhing morass once in while.
"Have no age, transcend both past and future, and enter into the eternal present."
– H.E. Davey
Don't try this, for example, while driving a bus, of course. But there are times, -holes in time, where the light can get in.. We can each reclaim our own true time if we want to, and pause. We can *take* our time, and just stare out the window.
Advanced level time taking is learning to *make* time.
Ask, for what and whom do you make time?
This is true magic and it is simple and it works. Lift your eyes. The sky is half the picture and it's a big universe. Try a different path, it is more likely to lead to more choices. Stop and think once in awhile. You were not put here to punch some time clock. Today, that job is for machines.
"Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness. "– George MacDonald
We rush by on our hurried way, but had we stopped there, really, truly stopped, for long enough to relax and feel centered and grounded, we might have found a spot with peace and beauty, treasure and love.
Or maybe we can make time to share with someone.
This place we rush past is a place in Time.
A hole where the living light of now blazes..
"In the beginning you will fall into the gaps in between thoughts – after practicing for years, you become the gap." – J. Kleykamp
