During a guided mini-meditation as part of a reading circle, my future self appeared, turning pages of a white book with gold trim. There were words written, things documented. “It’s all here,” she told me, “everything you’ve wanted to do. You did it.”
As a gift, my current self handed me a gold clock the size of a locket on a chain. There were numerous tiny arms extending from all around its body that would push and pull to adjust the clock and how it kept time. “You control time far more than you realize,” she said.
That meditation not only provided much needed reassurance, it also pointed out that I was allowing time to control me yet again, although I had already spent four intentional years building a healthier relationship with it. At the time of the meditation, I was facing what I perceived as obstacles, and in these moments, it’s easy to slip back into old patterns and habits without even realizing it.
When it comes to time, we’re all subject to losing our boundaries. We either feel that there’s too much time and we don’t know what to do with it or, more often, that it’s hastily dwindling and we’ll never have enough.
Afterall, most of the world measures time in brief, temporal patterns. It’s reflected back to us as the yearly calendar—months, weeks, days, 9 o’clock appointments, dinner at 6, bed at 10.
These frantic intervals make it difficult to understand and yield to time’s cyclical nature and its broader context and possibilities. Can you even fathom planting intentions that won’t bloom for a thousand years?
Time will always be there to mark when we have to do something or to keep track of when something happened and to help us record our lived experiences. But when left to only do that, it has a way of causing imbalance, pressure, and a sense that we are always losing the race against a ticking clock.
Instead, nurture your relationship with time in order to create more space for your natural cycles and rhythms to move into focus and enrich your life. Doing so will deepen your understanding of who you are and your seasons and how to make the most of them based on what you need and want.
It will enhance and expand your vision for life in general and your life specifically, and it will help you understand how to better structure and navigate it. And it’ll attune you to long-term goals that are broad enough to encompass and benefit generations.
When examining your relationship with time, start with simple questions to help mitigate any overwhelm:
- Do I often feel rushed or anxious? Why?
- Do I take on too many things in a day, a week, etc.? Why?
- Do I ever feel like I have too much time and not enough to do? When? How does that make me feel?
- Do I use my time the way I’d like? When? Or why not?
Naturally, new realizations and more questions will follow that will give you deeper insight into how time affects and operates in your life. And if you allow it, this clarity can lead to pivotal changes that better support you now and in the future.
