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We ask, “Do you have time?” as if time is something we possess. In Lewis Carroll’s, Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter said to Alice at the Tea Party, “If you knew Time as well as I do, you wouldn’t talk about wasting it. It’s him.” He told Alice that she didn’t understand because she never even spoke to Time. Alice said she only beats time to learn music. The Mad Hatter replied, “He won’t stand beating. Now if you only kept on good terms with him, he’d do almost anything you liked with the clock.” The Mad Hatter was right. We try to beat time in our frenzied schedules trying to make time for what we think is our “down time” only to feel more and more cheated of time, there never seems to be enough of it. We can live in a manner where time like the Mad Hatter said; “…He’d do almost anything you liked with the clock.”
We cannot hold back time or make it go faster. I know that because right now the plums in my garden are almost ripe for picking. For the last two weeks I have been eyeing those purple beauties, looking ever so delicious. I go every day and squeeze one or two to see if they are ready, but no. I even eat one or two and they taste sour. Yesterday I found a sweet one, but I know I have to wait a few more days until they reach the peak of perfection and the waiting would be all worth it! Everything has its time and its season, it’s the law of nature, we cannot hurry time. Patience is the virtue we draw on to respect time and its seasons.
For many of us that live in this new age of technology, we are so used to speed and efficiency; we have lost the art of waiting. We are a society with the need for instant gratification. We want what we want now and keep demanding for more, because we have not taken the time to digest and appreciate what we have. We hurry on to the next thing, hoping that’s where we will get satisfaction. We are stressed when we are in situations where we have no choice but to wait such as in traffic and grocery store line-ups. Many of us suffer from the “hurry up and wait” syndrome.
With a change in our mental attitudes towards time, we experience time and life on a whole different level. When we live in the moment, appreciating what we are engaged in, not thinking of the next thing we have to do, time seems to go slower, and we are less anxious. We learn how to make every moment and every action of our lives sacred. We live with contentment and joy. We can use all of our actions as opportunities for mindfulness meditation, by focusing on the task at hand. Thich Nhat Hanh speaks beautifully about living in the moment in his CD: The Art of Mindful Living
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