NdukuOutLoud

From whom? At what cost? Do my loved ones get some, too? Also, is it more time? Or time away from something? I sure could use some time off this adulting business. Is that on offer too? Like a short break from having to deal with mean bosses and unsatisfied customers. And an increasingly annoying government. Like a time off.

But time is a tricky issue.

We’re always either running out of it, or wasting it on trivial matters, or not appreciating it enough. Always hurrying stuff up in the interest of time- good news when it’s a meeting we couldn’t wait to leave. Bad news when it’s something we’re enjoying.

And what does it do? Does it slow down for us? Does it even care? Like the process that we’re trusting, does it know all these expectations we have placed on it?

Time heals. Time destroys. Great things are built over time. And only time will tell if they eventually pay for all the harm they caused.

Time.

So much pressure we put on time, don’t you think? When maybe it’s our whole idea around it that needs to change or grow. Because time, as we know it, is our own creation. The clocks, the calendars, the deadlines are human inventions. Systems we built to make sense of change, to organize life, to coordinate with each other. But somewhere along the way, we started serving them instead of shaping them.

Isn’t it strange that we feel overwhelmed by something we designed? That we let it dictate our worth, our pace, our peace? That two hours in an activity you enjoy feels like a few minutes, while ten minutes in those meetings feel like twenty-three?

That time doesn’t go faster when you’re talking to loved ones or slower when you’re in the supermarket queue. It just goes on. Unbothered. Unafraid.

What changes is the whole experience. What varies is the emotion fed into the activity-the process occupying the time.

So maybe no. Not more time. Just a fresher, firmer understanding of time itself. Of how precious it is. An ability to appreciate it’s value. To choose to spend it doing things that bring joy. Or at least bringing joy into everything we do- because it can’t always be pretty.

Maybe it’s time we stop chasing it, and start choosing how we live within it.