Time has been on my mind a lot lately.  Time spent with family over the holidays showed me how precious time really is.  It amazes me how so many things feel the same but everything is different or how we have done the same things for ages but it isn’t the same anymore.  How things can change because of how they feel and how the reality around us can feel so different than what we see.  The absence of those we love at this incredible time of year, the opportunity to say what we want to say gone forever, the guilt and weight of things left unsaid so heavy, the weight feels like it will crush us.  The things we still can’t say—my Aunt’s cat sitting on my lap as I type this, reminding me heavily of how important our choices are. Wishing I had reached out sooner, that I had put aside my fear of her sadness and just said I wish it had been different, that I had offered to move forward together.  That we had put aside all resentment and acknowledged she didn’t deserve to isolate like that, letting her time slip away.  I’ve always feared time, it’s something I’ve repeated so many times, I’m sure it’s exhausting, but I’ve been so painfully aware of the “clock” and that countdown my entire life that it feels oppressive, and I share this, trying to reconcile that fear. There are pieces of those we love that remain—I have remnants from both of my grandmothers, from both of my Aunts, from our lineage from both my mother and father.  I fear the time I spend doing things I don’t want to do.  I fear time spent doing what I want to do because I am stuck in a different era in my mind.  And that is the funny thing of time, the two facets—what is here and what is in my mind.

We have this image of time as it is and of time as we think it is. There is an image of Time itself, tiring and slowing while TIME relentlessly marches on.  The weight of the natural thing, heavy but unyielding, unstoppable.  We can’t change TIME.  We can merely change who we are through time.  Who we will be, not who we were.  So let the weary version slow and rest.  While part of us stops and rests in that beat, while TIME moves on, we see life move around us and we SEE all that has been and will be in that moment. We aren’t meant to stop time, we are OF time, IN time, OUR time.  Two bits of time existing simultaneously, the TIME in the natural world and our time, frozen, perpetual, limitless.  There is nothing to fear of the beats and ticks, of the clocks we built.  We didn’t fear time until the machine started reminding us of the moments, counting the breaths for us instead of measuring them.  We let the machine keep track of our life instead of nature, waiting for the right moments as told by someone else instead of remembering the ever-present NOW.  When we were bonded to our nature, before we were bonded to man’s word.  We were never meant to fear or count time, we were meant to live in time.  OUR time.  THIS time.  Now.  While we know the clock still ticks, we must KNOW and remember. The clock never existed.  It still doesn’t.  Time is told by suns and moons, and stars and breath and winds and rain and cold and heat and tides.  We pretend we are in control of time with alarms and clocks and calendars and devices that tell us where and what to be and when, but time is to be felt and lived and experienced and loved.  Measured with heartbeats and laughter and tears and joy and hope and even pain.  So we always remember we are master of nothing but how we feel. We never know when the CLOCK runs out, but we always know the end/beginning is near.  It doesn’t matter what TIME it is, it matters how we feel in time.  What we do with it.

So I speak of time, and the distinction between the natural clock and man’s clock is important.  The universal clock is always ticking and, yes, we are on its countdown.  There is an inevitable end for all of us and we do not know when that is—we will never be able to stop that.  That is the time most of us fear.  The unknown dictates the most important thing for us: our existence.  There is something beautiful to that natural clock in spite of the morbid fact that it is limited.  Our clock is innate and knows what to do, and it always runs on time.  Its timing is perfect and divine and always runs exactly as it is supposed to.  If we live in alignment with that purpose, with that idea, that we are where we are meant to be and when, there is nothing to fear.  We live and we love and we believe.  Man’s clock is something else entirely.  I’m sure none of us would deny the utility of a mechanism allowing us to arrange for coordinated interaction that we don’t miss and that allows for better communication and connection.  But we have put man’s clock above the universal clock in ways that don’t align with the natural order.  Who says we have to be married and own a home with 2 children by the time we are 30?  I know people that just started a second marriage at 42 and had their first kid at 44.  Man puts this idea out there that his timing is superior and he knows better when things are supposed to happen.  The universe will either agree or it will laugh at us.  We only have the power to let things be and we can guide our thoughts and actions towards the greater purpose.  We have no choice but to go with it otherwise we fight something that will not change.

I do not take my time for granted.  I know I wasted too much of it already thinking things needed to look a certain way or I needed permission and had to make sure that my actions wouldn’t interfere with anyone else’s goals.  I finally understood that my ideas have merit and no one can give that value.  It is more important to live in flow than try to control flow.  Living in two worlds, with two definitions of time is scary and challenging.  We often have to go against the grain of what we are told to do in society and we are highly influenced by what other people think so doing our own thing is intimidating.  But once we settle into the concept that we truly only have one go around, we can’t get back what we lost, and that we are meant to make something of ourselves that matters to us, then we are better able to transition into the flow of our own clocks and follow the natural rhythm set for us.  It’s easier to grasp that not everyone operates on the same time and that is OK.  Our journeys will always cross and separate, the ebb and flow of life brining us where we need to be with the right people when it is meant to happen.  We find each other and we separate and we find each other again.  The most important thing is to find our own path and our own rhythm and then the other time, man’s time, becomes irrelevant because we know we are aligned with what is meant for us and we trust that nothing will derail us from where we are meant to be, what we are meant to have, and the purpose we are meant to fulfill.