I had more thoughts regarding the message of time and its use - namely to do with anticipation and whether we focus on giving to or taking from life.
I've noticed that anticipation and trying to "get" something from an activity tends to narrow the life to be found in time spent - the time goes by but counts for less; there is less richness, less real achievement (connected to learning and/or giving), and, in short, life feels comparatively 'thin' and empty.
So I think it is not just what we do (which I wrote my thoughts about in
my previous post in this thread), but also how we do it - which also connects to the subject of lies we believe in - along with how we synchronize with life around us, which has to do with both cultural programming and social neuroscience.
Here's two quotes (original emphasis) from the book
Introvert Power by Laurie Helgoe:
p.91-92 said:
In his fascinating book,
Time Shifting, Stephen Rechtschaffen discusses another factor in how we experience time:
entrainment. Entrainment is what happens when you set two pendulum clocks to swing at different rates, and then put them side-by-side. They start to move together. [...] In the same way, entrainment affects our sense of time. People speed up in the hubub of an airport, whether or not they need to. You tap your foot to the beat of the music. A mother holds a sleeping baby to her chest, and the two begin to breathe in perfect harmony.
When we were dependent on nature and its seasonal fluctuations, the rhythms of time were cyclical. Now we experience time as a straight line with a beginning and an end--or many disconnected beginnings and endings. Rechtschaffen discusses the overall shift in our rhythm that came with the Industrial Revolution:
If the days, seasons, even lifetimes come around again, then time never runs out. What is not completed in the circle of today may be accomplished tomorrow. If not this year, then the next; if not in this lifetime, then in another...By contrast, our modern rhythm is distinctly unnatural, mirroring society's pull, not the magnetism of the earth. We're taught to think quickly, act quickly, accompllish quickly...We have superimposed on nature the rhythms of greed, of materialism, of "having it all."
Rechtschaffen also reminds us that nature is still with us and many different rhythms are available in modern life.
She writes of the
necessity for introverts (> 50% of the population) to have
time to think, and to access "the life-giving power of our own minds", since this is how introverts recharge and avoid depletion of energy. This naturally connects with the need to "pull our pendulums away from social rhythms", from the distorted rhythms of our modern - not to mention pathological, at this point - society. And also to question certain inculcated ways of thought and attitude.
Such can be found in looking at both the pace and stucture of activity - including how things are laid out in "time": Cyclically, versus in linear plans and "deadlines". She further questions the metaphor of "deadline", proposing the concept of "birth time" - the time when something has undergone development and is ready. And also brings attention to how our words and metaphors, curiously enough, generally associate killing and dying with all "unproductive" passing of time; all of it part of a mindset that keeps people anxious, stressed and driven, and often guilty about even stopping to reflect.
She then goes into another interesting aspect of time, our language and attitudes:
p.93 said:
Let's look at ways to expand time.
Shift from "take" to "give". I've been holding onto an article for years, waiting for the time I had need of it. It's a piece I found in Parabola magazine, titled "Learning to Die," by Brother David Steindl-Rast. In the article, the Benedictine monk discusses the awareness that comes with the "rule of St. Benedict," which is to "have death at all times before one's eyes." The death he talks about is not the artificial death imposed by goals, but quite the opposite: the giving over of goals, purpose, control. Throughout his article, he reveals how the language of "taking" is embedded in our thinking, and how this mentality has created "an 'underdeveloped nation' with regards to meaningful living." He observes: "We say we take time; but we really live only if we give time to what takes time. If you take a seat, it is not a very comfortable way of sitting down but if you let the seat take you that's more like it." To Steindl-Rast, this giving over, this attitude of "leisure" is a virtue.
Practice giving. Give time to what you value. Give up a little control. Work and play from a position of abundance, from an attitude of leisure.
Which brings me back to what I wrote at the top about anticipation, where implicitly we are trying to "take" something for ourselves through a given activity. When this became my way of mind in reading, working, writing, etc., then not only have I then soon found myself feeling short on time, and feeling that days went by without the time having had much substance, but I also got sidetracked in
what I did as well - in the rush to get, to take, tunnel vision quickly set in and judgment of priorities became skewed.
If you think of these grey men in Ende's story, this also goes to what they do and the results of it, though it's less explicit in the narrative: They convince people of what they can
get if they focus on this and this at the cost of that and that. The victims of the persuasion not only try to "save time", but also become ever-more focused on what they are getting for themselves through their activity - and shape their entire lives around an illusion of anticipated reward. So I also see it as a strory of the trap of anticipation, greed, and a deeper descent into the STS way of life. The
real consequences both for the self and for others are disregarded.
