It’s About Timely
Time has developed the unsavory habit of speeding. In fact, I suspect it has been taking professional driving lessons and is using my weekdays as practice.
It’s Monday and then about 20 hours later it’s Friday. This has been going on for quite awhile now.
Luckily, my children are all raised and therefore on a personal level, I only have myself to manage. If I was still actively caring for a family, I would feel pushed to the breaking point.
Leisure, solitude, privacy, self-sufficiency and silence are all relatives of time. Because of the serious behavioral changes that time has gone through, we need to understand the role that these other aspects of time serve in our quest for a sane and fulfilling life.
Leisure has an exotic aspect to its self-image. It carries fantasies of running off to tropical islands that offer warm, pristine, blue waters and white, sandy beaches. It envisions starry nights spent sitting under a canopy of stars with our best and brightest selves fully engaged in a rich, connection with those we love.
Since we already live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, leisure’s fantasies carry a bit less power to convince our over-wrought minds that running away would do much of anything.
Privacy is much more basic. It is a requirement for self-dignity. At its base, it means a freedom from intrusion. Privacy is one of those rights that have been eroded until it is only a shadow of its former self. We are bombarded by noise pollution that is so pervasive that most of us are shell-shocked into shutting our eyes and ears to what is happening around us. That may seem like an acceptable solution until we take a closer look at the price we pay for living numbed out.
Making a commitment to slow down to reflect and take time to feel is a daunting but necessary challenge. Why? Because privacy and leisure do not come to us through more doing. We may have adopted the habit of speed-living so that our lives are not very pretty but we make great time.
What we seldom take is the time to feel into the events that have happened and the realities that are currently happening. As a result, we are unprepared to more fully experience the things that are still ahead of us.
The only way to cultivate a consistent relationship with our inner guidance, our sixth sense, is through leisure time to both reflect and feel with our five senses activated, alert and present.
In a society that judges self-worth on productivity, it is no wonder we fall prey to the misconception that the more we do, the more worthy we are. Add to that is the fact that, particularly mothers of small children, must wrestle with the fear that commanding specific time that we can call our own will be interpreted as a rejection by those we love.
It is important that we come to a true understanding that time to reflect and feel is the portal into the realm of prayer. Inner calm is not a thing we make. It is something we enter.
When we give ourselves permission to enter the inner garden of our heart’s desires, our soul can meet its god and silence can tell us another of its fine and inspiring stories.
Susan writes and produces on-going experiential personal growth workshops locally. Reach her at susanvelasquez.com.
