Deconstructing Time

We don’t ask how long the sun will take to set.

But little else in our lives is free from clocks and calendars.

It’s not that they’re bad. I am more relieved than anyone to now that certain things: like exercise classes, boring meetings and that time of the month have definite endings.

But, it seems like there is room for the joyful activities in life to be governed more by a different criteria than time. Simple things, like breakfast, always seem to have a clock ticking out the minutes before school or lacrosse practice or errand running.

Tick, tick, tick– Tock!

Time’s up. We must now move down the assembly line of our day and plug into activity number two. That’s how it feels.

It’s not to say we don’t allow experience to run the show. As a couple we have date nights and long lunches. As a family we have jam sessions and an ongoing story series about Peanut and Gerry that we make up as we go.

But there is still so little room for experiences to breathe.

It is hard to let go of that revved up feeling. What’s next? What are we forgetting? What are we missing? What haven’t we done? Surely, there must be some additional task or person that needs tending too.

And the answer is yes. There is. But it’s not something or someone different than what we are already doing. It’s just we have becomes so conditioned to looking past what is I front s us to what is next.

Time is merely a derivative of attention.

Here’s a fairly ironic example. Leo, our ten year old and I were trying to help his brother Finn, understand how attention and focus work.

So I said, “It’s kind of like a flashlight. You get to choose wherever you shine it and then THAT is where your attention goes.”

Finn eagerly corrected me, “Well, you should really have TWO flashlights.”

Leo and I laughed. Leo tried to explain, “Finn, the whole point of it is to shine your flashlight of attention in one place,” he said.

“Well,” Finn added sarcastically, “What about your flashlight of focus???”

He waited for Leo and I to have our AHA moment.

What followed was a sticky hairball of misunderstanding after which I apologized for not explaining better that focus is where you put your attention.

Finn’s focus is sharp and wide, panoramic and extreme close-up.

He has the eye of an artist. His instinct tells him where to get singular with his attention. He is not as easily swayed by all of our needs, and shoulds and wants. He follows his heart, his inspiration– his intuition.

This is what we try to be about as a family. And yet, we continue to push him in our direction– to see what we see, what his teachers and coaches and common sense want him to see. How trivial and boring and… common. We must relent!

He just experiences time differently.

His world is governed by a different aesthetic– one tied more closely to the heartbeat of living more so than the pings and dings of scheduling.

I am not a big fan of baseball. Takes too long for me. And yet, this poem came across my screen recently and struck me with its offer of an alternative perspective.

National Pastime by Bill Mayer

Though we know

everything is bounded

by time,

there is, after all,

baseball,

in which time has its function,

but does not rule.

I remember one game, years ago,

in the ninth inning,

the home team, down seven runs, scored eight,

and after two were out.

So it’s possible, even though

we think we know,

that we do not know,

and Bonds will hit the game winning, three-run jack,

and the fans,

the local ones anyway,

will go home satisfied.

The limits are vague, or undefined, or possibly misunderstood.

Which is not to say

there are secret ways out

or exceptions to the body’s slow decline.

Still,

it gives you a place to doubt from,

a perspective that,

like the curve, will move in, or out, or not,

but works,

regardless.

There is a small triumph when we release the hands of time.