Stephan Rechtschaffen, M.D., cofounder and director of the Omega
Institutefor Holistic Studies, warns that our emotions are taking a back
seat to the rapid pace of our lives. With our past devoid of experience,
our future filled with anxiety, the only place to go? Into the
present.
There are cultures on this planet that have no word for minute or
hour; where a moment can last a whole morning. We don't live in one of
them. Rather, we live in a culture where the efficient and productive use
of time has become high art--a culture where, if you can balance three
spinning plates on three thin sticks, you are rewarded with a fourth
plate. Then a fifth.
The belief that time is a resource that must be monitored closely
and managed carefully is one of the basic laws of our time-crunched
world, as is the imperative to do more and do it quicker. Is it any
wonder our culture favors the young and energetic? Who else can
accomplish the hundreds of tasks each of us must master in a typical day,
as well as process the thousand bits of information rushing at us every
hour?
In my workshops at Omega and around the country on
time-shifting--learning how to toggle between hyperproductivity and an
awareness of the world around you--the first question I pose is "Do you
feel that you have enough time in your daily lives?" Invariably, more
than 90 percent declare an overwhelming sense of "time-poverty"--part of
an epidemic of anxiety and pressure in our society.
Ironically, in response, methods to improve our management of time
have gained in popularity, along with new, speedier technology that helps
us develop greater efficiency. Yet while these initially seem to help,
they ultimately serve only to increase the speed of our lives. We learn
to go faster and get more done--only to take on more work and
responsibility.
A curious thing happens as the pace of our lives grows faster and
faster-our definition of a "moment" grows shorter and shorter, moving our
awareness of time into ever-tinier increments. By cramming each moment so
full of events, we leave ourselves no time to actually experience them in
any meaningful way.
As a result, the future arrives that much quicker, and it begins to
predominate. The "now" becomes a prelude to the "next." We do this so we
can get to that. We work for the weekend, rush through lunch to get back
to our desks, worry about next month's deadline before this month is
completed. We divide our attention and awareness between the task at hand
that we're rushing to complete and the next item on our
day-planner.
"MIND TIME" VS. "EMOTIONAL TIME"
As well as not living in the present, the vast majority of us spend
our time not being present in our lives. Slowly, our perceptions of the
world and our existence in it are being curtailed. We are so focused on
what's ahead that we just can't come alive in the here and now. Instead
of shortening each moment of time, instead of breaking them down into
progressively smaller units, we need to learn how to expand them, how to
open ourselves more comfortably to our senses and bring attention into
the without having our mind race back and forth with other distracting
thoughts.
The pace of our lives has created a chasm between our emotions and
our thoughts, which operate at different speeds. Thoughts, which are
processed electrically, communicate faster than our hormonal and chemical
emotions. The demands of the modern world have required us to function
more quickly, so we use what I call "mind time" to mentally engage to our
fullest in order to juggle upcoming events. There is no time to deal with
or process our slower feelings--utilizing what I call "emotional
time"--so we repress them or stuff them down.
Despite this avoidance, however, our emotions don't disappear, nor
do they stay down for long. The moment we begin to slow down, they come
flooding back in and we begin to feel again. Unfortunately, many people
report that when they try to relax, what comes up are uncomfortable
emotions--anxiety or anger over unresolved encounters, guilt over
inactivity. So we get busy again, and repress once more those feelings
that allow us to fully experience our lives.
Confronting this reservoir of unprocessed emotion is one of the
major challenges that face us as we continue to age. Growing older
involves a lifetime shift in the way we perceive time as well as the way
we use it. If our experience of slowing down is always pain or
discomfort, no wonder we can't sit still, no wonder we busy ourselves and
continue to feel in a rush to accomplish.
LINEAR VS. CIRCULAR TIME
Each of us is born into and raised in a particular "time world"--an
environment with its own rhythm to which we entrain ourselves. Certain
cultures have related to time as a circular phenomenon, in which there is
no pressure or future anxiety. The whole of existence goes around: the
cycle of the seasons, of planting and harvesting, the daily return of the
sun, of birth and death.
In circular time there is no pressing need to achieve and create
newness, or to insatiably produce more than is needed to simply survive.
Additionally, there is no fear of death. Such societies have successfully
integrated the past and future into a peaceful sense of the present. They
also honored the wisdom of elders who held the knowledge of the
past--upon which the future was clearly linked.
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