Ah man, I am so busy! I just dropped the kids at school after slapping together some PBJs, and I have this long list of things I need to complete before the end of the day. How am I going to get it all done?
Does this sound at all familiar?
Years ago, I was tasked with helping build an outhouse with a friend (we'll call him Joe) at a farm we were both living at at the time. The following morning, he and I were to begin digging a very deep pit. That morning, I attended the morning meditation and noticed Joe was not there. After meditation and grabbing a quick bite to eat, I headed over to the site, ready to get dirty.
To my surprise, Joe was already there, standing in a hole that was way above his head. As it happened when he woke up, he had the inspiration to start digging, and by 8:30 a.m., it was complete!
Now, would Joe have completed the task had he stopped and carefully calculated his progress? Perhaps. Though often, the primary culprit of what slows us down is the thought of time. Especially when it’s tasks we do not want to do!
When we observe the pressure many of us have, it’s not always actually about time itself; it’s about psychological time. When our minds project into the future, we often carry the weight of everything that has not yet been done and place it all into the present moment.
Yet if you look at the present moment by itself, it is rarely overwhelming. Not unless you have a 9-year-old who has turned into a limp noodle at the thought of going out the door to school.
I lived in Italy for a number of years, and Italians, by nature, view time as flexible, kind of like silly putty. From the American viewpoint, this can be seen as, let’s say, rather “unpractical.” Yet if you dive deeper, it actually contains a wealth of wisdom. It emphasizes being in the present moment. That everything on our to-do list will get done, but not by the constructs of our minds.
When we step back from living in future time and live in the moment, we often arrive to our destinations much faster than we expect.
Written by Jaidhara Sleighter
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