New Year, Old You?

As we enter a brand new year, filled with excitement and hopes for everything to come, setting goals, making resolutions, trying to make the changes we feel the need to make, we try to preemptively shape our year in a way that can ‘ensure’ that we achieve everything we desire. And perhaps there is an element of shame here, a shame over having not achieved the things we felt we should have already ought to, a shame over listing the same resolutions as last year having still made no progress. We end up starting our year overwhelmed and stressed, trying to play catch up in being the person we always thought we’d be, constantly haunted by the feeling that we are running out of time.

I have learnt that this is a feeling that is shared by many of us, yet most of us tend to conceal it, making every effort to not let it show. However, there is a point when one has to acknowledge that this is no way to live a life, seeking to attain a level of perfection that doesn’t exist and then chastising yourself for not meeting these imaginary standards. So much time can be wasted frozen by feelings of insecurity, dissatisfaction, deficiency, and imperfection, that the goals that would be more easily achieved tend to also remain undone. It is a pattern that has to be broken, but how?

Our Relationship with Time

More than ever before, I can see that our modern way of life negatively affects our relationship with time and time passing. The majority of us have become so disconnected from the natural cycles of the world because many of them have been replaced by the notion that we should

1. be able to do everything all of the time and
2. that we should be able to have anything we want at any given moment.

We are forced to try and fit ourselves into a routine that is ceaseless and monotonous, where there is no ebb and flow. No real change. At least, no real acknowledgement of the changes that are occurring around us or within us. We have become desensitised to them. And so, our life can end up feeling like one big blur. Days merging together, months merging together, years merging together. Our perception of time speeds up because we have nothing to pin to it anymore. We have little to focus on that cements us in a certain time or place in our memory, unless we make the conscious choice to do so.

Strawberries in December

The natural world is in a constant state of flux. Though there is a rhythm, a cycle, that is repeated, the changes leave room for different phases and offer up different purposes. Nothing is overly rigid, robotic, or singular, instead, there is a moment for one thing and a moment for another.

An example could be the changing of the seasons. Each season brings something new to us- new weather, new opportunities, new foods even. Yet in this day and age, how often do we acknowledge this, truly? And how often do we really live by it? For many of us in the modern world, we can access pretty much any type of food we want all year round. If we want strawberries in December we can have strawberries in December. They might not taste the best, but who cares? What matters is that if we want them, we can have them.

But in doing so, we take something outside of its place in the year, and put it where it was never supposed to be. This may seem to be a very small thing to mention, a stupid thing even, but, if you really think about it, in being able to have something as special as strawberries all year round, we make the season for them less special. We no longer see their season as something to look forward to. June is no longer marked in our minds as being the time of the year when we can finally have strawberries, because we can always have strawberries. And so, in this small way we lose a moment in the year that helped us mark time, a moment that helped us welcome in a new phase, enjoy it while it lasts, and then let it go as the cycle shifts again, bringing its next season.

By The Ticking Of The Moon

Much of our lives are marked by the time on the clock, the months of the year, and the age that we are. Have we done enough to not have wasted a day? Have we done enough to not have wasted a life? One thing I always wonder about is what must it have been like before clocks were invented? Was our relationship to time very different? Much looser? Instead of being bound by hours, minutes, and seconds, were we guided by the phases of the moon, the rising of the sun, and the placement of the stars? I guess so.

Fully recognising that our current concept and interaction with time is something that has evolved throughout the centuries and not something that was completely understood in the beginning is kind of wild to me. For example, the time zones of the globe were only standardised in 1883, which seems really quite recent for something we have become so used to. Before then, timekeeping was a local science and different towns would set their clocks to noon based on when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. As a result, when travelling from one town to the next, people would have had to understand the difference between the time of the place they were travelling from and the time of the place they were travelling to in order to know when it was they were going to arrive.

I think it is safe to say that their relationship to time was very different to ours. Ours is so much more regimented. And I think we tend to feel trapped by it, painfully aware of every second that slips by. But, in understanding that our concept of time has evolved, perhaps then we can realise that in some ways, it doesn’t really exist, or at least it doesn’t have to exist in the way we have been taught that it does. It could be as free as the moon phases and the turn of the seasons if we wanted it to be, giving us space to change, shift, and evolve without the pressure of such numerical deadlines.

Nowhere To Rush To

Perhaps for our own sanity we need to change our relationship with time. By shifting our perception away from it being something rigid and uncompromising and towards the notion that it can be very free, we can ebb and flow with it like the waves of the sea. And when we make our resolutions and set our goals, may we do so understanding that we do not need to restrict our successes to what we do every 24 hours but recognise the fluctuations of energy throughout the month, where there is a moment for one thing and a moment for another.

Each day need not look the same for it to be productive, each day need not look the same for you to be considered perfect. Life is not a treadmill on which we must keep all of our balls in the air, but a process of growth, learning, and understanding. There are different phases for different things, just like the seasons, just like the moon. There are moments for peace, solitude, and introspection, there are moments for work, community, and celebration. In giving ourselves room to fully acknowledge and experience the different moments that life brings, we mark time in a way that is conscious, personal, and memorable.

There is nothing to rush to, no-one to perform for, no approval to gain. We can just be, and in being we may find that we become less encumbered by the so-called expectations that are placed upon us and that we place upon ourselves. And when we realise this, we soon find the energy again to pursue aspirations with intention and authenticity, allowing us to see more clearly and recognise the fact that… we aren’t running out of time at all.