The Illusion Of Dead Time
Killing Time or Living Time, Purposeful Time, No Time Is Dead
Every moment does not need to be productive, but it can always be purposeful.Curious
Killing time or living time:
Curiosity, or a lack of it, decides whether you have time to kill or time to live.
If you lack curiosity for the current moment, your experience will feel like time to kill, but if you remain open to what is in front of you, your reality will gift you an opportunity to live it.
Killing time is passive. Living time is present.
As
, who writes ‘Shy Guy Meets The Buddha’ neatly describes, “If you’re in the shower, don’t be at work. Be in the shower.”Wherever you are, be there.
Conscious
Purposeful time:
"It takes courage to say yes to rest and play in a culture where exhaustion is seen as a status symbol."
- Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
~~~
“If the price of peace were a lowering of your consciousness and the price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness, then they wouldn’t be worth having.”
- Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
Alive time doesn’t require you to be in a constant state of doing. Sometimes, a healthy dose of being is exactly what is called for. In other words, every moment does not need to be productive, but it can always be purposeful.
Change
No time is dead:
When I wrote about the freedom of less, I asked readers to vote on something they could do with a little less of in exchange for a little more of something else.
‘Less seeking in exchange for a little more being’ was the most common response by a country mile with 61% of the votes.
The good news is that there are plenty of daily experiences where we are usually passive, dead spots, so to speak, like your commute to work, when you go to the bathroom, while you’re in the shower, or when you’re waiting for the kettle to boil, that can be transformed into moments of more being.
Rather than living in your head or on your phone, waiting for that time to be over, see them as an opportunity to be present.
No time is dead when you are being yourself.
Live Free,
Niall
P.S. This letter was largely a note to self too.
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The length of this article is perfect. Thanks for sharing Niall.
Absolutely. I spend a lot of time meditating on the idea of time. Loved your observations and insights on this. Here was my notes on it if you want to check it out. : https://meganyoungmee.substack.com/p/losing-time/comments