It's About Time!

I hear students, colleagues, and clients lament the lack of time. Everyone, me included, seems to be continually pressed for time. Time is much on our minds, yet we seldom think about time. So following are some of my random thoughts about time and other things that have occurred to me as I have taken the time to think about time.

We usually think of time as linear--past, present, future. Yet the past is present in its influence of our current reality. How we view the future influences the present. If I view a goal as possible or impossible, that perspective will influence how I act in the present. What I have done in the past determines my present and future circumstances. What I do now influences how I perceive the past and future. My present influences how I interpret the past. My view of the future impacts how I perceive the present and past.

There is only the now. We create our past through memory and our future through anticipation. Both are imagination. We image our past and future from the now. Time flows from the now. When is the now? We can’t nail it down. If all there is is the now and we can’t identify that, we have eliminated time.

If we think of time as linear, we plan in a linear fashion. Yet life is experienced in cycles and in disorder. We attempt to gain order out of the disorder by gaining control. Control restricts. It eventually strangles the life out of life.

We say that things change in time. But time is change. Without change there would be no time. Change is life. We seek change to avoid boredom. Yet we try to minimize change to gain control. Our attempts to control lead to slow suicide.

We seek to control by knowing. Yet we are limited by what we know. Knowledge locks us into the past. We can only know what is or has been. Knowledge limits change, which limits life. To stay within the known is to remain in the past.

Knowledge brings clarity. We are unclear about that which we do not know. Growth involves change. This means having to venture into the unknown, which is unclear. Insight is clarity emerging from confusion. Questioning leads to certainty. Certainty eliminates questioning.

Life requires growth which requires change. This calls for openness. Closed systems experience entropy and die. Perfect equilibrium is death. Open systems evolve to higher complexity.

If I am clear, you know what I am talking about. So I am then simply reiterating what you already know. This reinforces stagnation. If what I share confuses you, then I have moved you into the unknown. It is from the realm of the unknown that growth emerges.

This is why our situation remains the same. We continue to operate from the known. That is why we keep getting what we have always gotten. We may rearrange the furniture, even replace the furniture, yet we are still living in the same house. We must change houses if we are to live in a new place. By changing our minds, we change our lives.