Time sure has been going by quickly, huh?
This picture… it is here as a metaphor. A metaphor for all that time that I see zipping away before my very eyes. It’s also here because blog posts with pictures get more ~enGAgEmENt~
It’s not just a case of Quarantine Brain for me, although that certainly isn’t helping.
I’ve never been the sort of person to do things slowly and deliberately. I always raced to finish tests, homework, and chores – even things I enjoy like playing video games – always just about getting things done and over with for the sake of being done with it. I breeze through books and barely retain anything. My mind very rarely sits still. Not that it’s obsessed with anything important, but it’s constantly nattering away about some such nonsense or another.
I’ve always been like this: get it done, get it done, get it done.
For the past few years, but especially during COVIDtimes, it feels like time is rushing by too damn fast. I’m not present, I’m not here, as time as going by.
I’m not feeling the time.
“Being present” is an unhelpful phrase.
“Feeling time” is one of those concepts that makes perfect sense in my brain, but it’s tough for me to put in words. It’s similar to the idea of “being present,” but there’s something about “feeling time” which resonates deeper. “Being present” or “being mindful” are useful concepts, yet abstract enough that they have little functional use to me. I’m the sort of person who needs to understand what “being present” feels like before I can attempt to do it more often, but there are too many different sensations associated with potentially “being present” and it’s super easy to trick myself into thinking I’m living in the moment when I’m totally not. Telling me to “be more present” is one of those phrases that’s similar to telling a depressed person “have you tried being happy?”
“Wow, you sure seem concerned about time slipping away and not appreciating the simple events of your day-to-day. Have you tried being present?”
Yes. I have. I try all the time. I’ve been meditating nearly every morning for years. I frequently remind myself to stop and slow down and breathe throughout the day. I’m still barely here most of the time, barely in the world I’m participating in, a participation already barely there.
“Being present” isn’t concrete enough for me to utilize it. I know I’m truly being present when I’m feeling time.
“Feeling time”? Expound, please.
The easiest way for me to put it is by describing precise sensations. Relaxation and alertness at the same time. Paying acute attention to my surroundings and my motions. Letting thoughts pass. A deepening of the breath. I feel my body from the inside.
Feeling time can be kind of agonizing. It means paying attention to what is around me to such a degree the seconds have a physical weight to them. It can hurt to live through those seconds when everything in my body is yelling at me to speed up and just get it done and go faster like it always wants to do.
If I have a bit of a dull ache in my body from the internal friction of “just getting through this” and being deliberate, slowing down, feeling time: that’s how I know I’m on to something. It’s a concrete feeling I know how to replicate. It doesn’t always ache, but often the transition to feeling time produces such a sensation.
“Feeling time” isn’t something I’m good at. I only put a name to the idea a couple weeks ago. I frequently have to remind myself to actually, you know, do the damn thing. Then I quickly forget about it and the ease of it slips away. But now that I have a concrete series of sensations attached to “being present,” it’s gone from a heady abstract notion into a more grounded and physical one, replicating it is easier than it used to be for me.
Okay, but does this solve your problem?
Look, I know this idea of “feeling time” isn’t going to remedy the issue of days just whizzing by with a samely weekly routine for over three quarters of a year now, but living through the dullness and routine, forcing myself to be there for it and pay attention to making the same french press every morning, the same run, the same one of a thousand other tasks… perhaps something will come of it. “Forcing” is the wrong word. If I’m doing it right, it’s more that I’m “letting” myself experience it.
All I know is that when I give myself over to feeling time, a lot of my anxieties become easier to deal with. A lot of the pressures I put on myself to be great fade into the background.
I want to feel the passage of time, every second of it that I can. Even if nothing new is stimulating me. Especially if nothing new is stimulating me.