READINGS:
Responsive Reading #556--"These Roses" from Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Song (4)" in Collected Poems 1957-1982 by Wendell Berry (pp.
264-265); also found in Earth Prayers (p. 286):
Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.
Only music keeps us here,
each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again.
And then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone
into darker circles of return.
From The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey:
Now if I were sitting at (my) funeral..., and one of my children was about to speak, I would want his life to represent the victory of teaching, training, and disciplining with love over a period of years rather than the battle scars of quick fix skirmishes. I would want his heart and mind to be filled with the pleasant memories of deep, meaningful times together. I would want him to remember me as a loving father who shared the fun and the pain of growing up. I would want him to remember the times he came to me with his problems and concerns. I would want to have listened and loved and helped. I would want him to know I wasn't perfect, but that I had tried with everything I had. And that, perhaps more than anybody in the world, I love him.
Sometimes it feels like my whole life revolves around the devices that make contemporary life in the United States so convenient and time efficient for most of us. Here's a partial list from my house: two cars, an electric garage opener, a lawn mower, a weed-whacker, a microwave, a dishwasher, a cuisinart, a chest freezer full of frozen foods, a coffee maker, an electric frying pan, a dust buster, a cordless telephone, an answering machine, a VCR/stereo system, a shower, an electric razor, a hair dryer, disposable diapers, a clock radio for gentle waking, a washer and dryer. My office is equipped with a computer and intercom, and soon, voice mail. Stores are open 24 hours for my convenience. I can call Land's End in the middle of the night and place an order, and I can call an investment firm at the same time and make an adjustment in my portfolio.
With all this, why is it that I feel so pressed for time so much of the time? Why is it that time seems so much more scarce for me than it was for my parents when they were my age? Why is it that so many of you ask the same questions? Why is that so many people--including me--almost automatically answer "Busy!" when someone asks how we're doing? I have hardly ever heard anyone answer that question by saying, "Well, I'm kind of underchallenged right now. There's just too much free time in my life!" Whether we are working or unemployed, retired or working overtime, single or in a life partnership, in a two-career or a one-career families, single parent or two parent families, most of us feel too busy. In his book on these questions, Ralph Keyes coined a word for what so many are experiencing: "timelock." With this word, he evokes an image of being caught in a horrible traffic jam; only it's busyness we're caught in. What's going on?
I want to highlight six reasons I believe so many of us feel timelocked. First, it is the result of the American heritage. From the beginning of the European conquest and settlement of this country, hard work, perseverance and motion have been emphasized. The Puritans outlawed idleness. Ben Franklin bragged about a work-absorbed daily schedule in his autobiography and created all of those lasting wise sayings about working hard and not wasting time. With the Industrial Revolution, workers came to be paid not for their skills but for their time. Our culture--perhaps more than any other in the history of the world with the possible exception of modern Japan--has made an idol of busyness.
The second reason for the increasing prevalence of feeling timelocked is economic. More and more of us are feeling pressured to work ever longer hours in order just to keep up financially. Global competition and down-sizing seem to have become facts of life. With this reality, the corporate culture has bred in us the feeling that if we only work harder and longer, maybe we'll somehow manage to avoid the axe. (Not that it really works out this way.)
A related trend is overtime. With the explosion in the costs of benefits, more and more companies are discovering that it makes economic sense to pay for overtime rather than to hire additional workers.
Also related to economics is the advent of two-career families. Economics isn't the only reason women are far more likely to work outside the home than in the past. The quest for equality, for example, has something to do with this trend. Regardless of the motivation, the reality of two-career families has a significant effect on time. While both parents are away from the home more, household chores continue unabated. Studies reveal that women in particular are paying a high price for this in that they often have two careers all by themselves: their homemaking career and their out-of-the-house career. Much of the time the second career is simply added to the first. Women consistently report feeling more timelocked than men. Single working mothers top the list of the timelocked, with working mothers in life partnerships close behind.
A third reason for our feelings of timelock is our increasingly rapid pace. Some of us enjoy and thrive on this rapid pace; most probably don't. For those who don't, the feelings that result from the faster pace include always feeling hurried, nervousness, and a belief that time has somehow become an enemy. The technological advances of our society continue to speed things up. Consider the fax machine and electronic mail. Now we can send and receive correspondence and important papers not in days or even overnight, but instantly. We get used to living at a faster and faster pace. For example, one of our cars has preset radio buttons, the other doesn't. I hate using the radio in the car that doesn't, because I hate having to actually turn the dial to change the station. The fast lane can be addicting!
Ralph Keyes points out, too, that we have all but eliminated pauses during our day. Think about the time we used to spend putting a new sheet of paper into our typewriter, for example, or the few seconds we waited for the tape cassette or album to start playing. Now we only seldom have to reload our printers, and compact discs start playing almost the instant we push the button. We can even load six cd's at a time and not have to worry about the music for an entire evening. A garage door opener is another example of a device which has eliminated a pause in our day. Instead of stopping our car, getting out and manually opening the door, we push a button and drive in the garage. As our machines have gotten quicker, momentary pauses in the day have become shorter and more infrequent.
Another way we have increased the pace is by cultivating the ability to do more than one thing at once. Many of our conveniences are designed to enable us to something else while we use them. My family just got a cordless phone for Christmas. One of the advantages of the phone is that I can get away from yelling kids and talk. Another is that I can do work around the house while I talk.
This leads me to the fourth reason we seem to be ever more timelocked. It is the conveniences themselves. Take the lawn mower, for example. A century ago most people didn't have lawns. Once the mower was invented, it became easier to cut grass. The result: more people decided to have a lawn. Sure, mowing is easier now than going out there a hundred years ago with a machete. But the reality is that a hundred years ago, most people didn't ever have to spend a single minute cutting grass because they didn't have lawns. Three seasons a year--if I'm a good citizen--I spend an hour every ten days or so using my convenient lawn mower. What a time saver!
When they do actually save us time, these conveniences encourage us to fill our days with other activities. Time savers like the dishwasher and the microwave oven have enabled us to have more time to do other things--like mow the lawn and work over-time.
These conveniences also often end up actually taking a lot of time by absorbing us with manuals and repairs. The cordless phone my family asked for and received from an out-of-state relative is instructional. First I spent time (while watching a football game) going through the manual. In the past, whenever we bought a conventional phone, I simply plugged it in. I know how they work; I don't need to look at the manual. But a cordless phone is something else. So I spent a lot of time reading the manual. Then we moved our old phone upstairs to our bedroom, to a spot my eighteen-month-old son can easily reach. He started hitting the memory buttons, which alarmed us because several of them were 911 emergency buttons. Not remembering how to deprogram the numbers in the memory, I spent a long time unsuccessfully searching for the previously unread manual to the old phone.
Then, after a couple weeks, our cordless phone died. I called stores around here, but they could not replace it because it was not purchased here. I called the 800 number listed in the manual. The operator gave me some tips. If they didn't work, then I have to buy a new battery (at my cost). If that doesn't work, then I have to mail the phone back to the manufacturer (at my cost), and they'll cheerfully replace it. I'm asking myself: Is this convenience really worth it?
Abraham Mitrie Rihbany had it right in 1922. He wrote:
A final reason for our feelings of timelock is less concrete but perhaps more important. It is that many of us are desperately trying to keep busy in order to avoid having to feel our emotions and contemplate our lives. Slowing down for a bit gives us the chance for contemplation, and it gives our emotions a chance to be felt. For many of this, is more terror-inducing than the most timelocked of existences.
Okay, I've laid out the problem--many of us feel timelocked--and explored some of the reasons for this feeling. So what can those of us who feel timelocked do about it? I have some ideas that make sense to me.
But first let me make it clear that I am no expert on this; nor does my life reveal a person free of timelock. For example, I read an Utne Reader issue exploring the issue of timelock at the YMCA while exercising on the Stairmaster and listening to a radio talk-show on the Packers. There I was, half listening to the radio, reading the magazine and struggling to underline important sentences about our unfortunate tendency to do more than one thing at once while going up and down on the Stairmaster. And you're going to take advice from me?
What's more, I am a terrible judge of time. Almost without fail, I horribly underestimate how long specific jobs are going to take. This description in one of the Utne Reader articles fits me perfectly: "If my colleagues and I were as bad at estimating space as we are at estimating time, we'd be crashing into furniture and dropping coffee cups off our desks." ["You can't always get done what you want" by Marjorie Kelly in the Utne Reader, January February 1994, p. 63]
Another thing I need to make clear is that as far as I'm concerned, there's no magic answer to the problem of being time-locked. For one thing, each of us is different. What works for you may not work for me. What works terrifically for me might be total disaster for you. Further, beware of the time management system designed to solve this problem in one fell swoop. Beware the revolutionary new time management organizer guaranteed to give us the gift of time. Beware, too, of time management strategies designed to free up time so we can do more things and accomplish more! If such a strategy does succeed, we'll be sorry!
With that said, from my reading, contemplation and experiences, I come up with six things that make sense to me as ways to better live in time. (Please note that I did not say things which will help us "manage" time. Given my belief that time is a gift of the universe--like life--living in time is a much more appropriate way to think about time than "managing" time.)
First, I think it is helpful to conceptualize and understand time in a variety of ways. Last week I talked about understanding time as cyclic, linear and relative. All are important and helpful. For example, my appreciation of cyclic time is growing. My body continues to live in the rhythms of the days, seasons and years. This realization has enabled me to become more attentive to my cycles. Through paying attention to my daily cycles, I have learned when I am most awake and creative. I have tried to make sure that my schedule allows me to spend that time of each day reading, preparing sermons, or with family.
At the same time, it is helpful at times to think of my time here as a linear progression from birth to my death. This understanding of time gives me another angle on life.
And it is helpful to understand time as relative, to realize that time is experienced differently depending on what happens within specific chunks of time. The quantum mechanics understanding of time (and everything else) as having an element of unpredictability is also helpful. This past week has once again revealed this truth to me. On Thursday both our child-care for our son and one of our cars broke down. The best-laid plans for Thursday and Friday were blown up by events beyond our control, illustrating the beautiful truth that time and life are far too unpredictable to "manage" with any consistent success.
The second thing that helps me live in time is cultivating a sense of perspective. As I shared last week, the enormity of the billions of years of time's existence helps me do this, as does the understanding that life as we know it will not always exist. In the broad scope of things, the dumb thing I did yesterday is not the end of the world, nor will the dumb thing I do tomorrow. Some of the great sages in our Unitarian Universalist religion--Emerson, for example--had it right: the best time to live is not regretfully or longingly in the past or peering into the future, but in the present. Be most attentive to the now.
It is interesting to me that some of the people who best understand
this truth are people who have nearly died. We might think that the experience
of facing death in a very concrete way would cause people to cling ever
more tenaciously to life, to strive even harder to pack as much as possible
into their remaining days. On the contrary, most seem to slow their pace,
to focus more on living in the moment. The reason for this: their experience
of facing death gave them the gift of perspective. Carlos Castenada writes:
The fourth thing I would recommend is to slow the pace of our lives. How can we slow the pace?
>Watch the appliances and conveniences. Evaluate if they really will improve the qualities of our lives.
>Create pauses in our lives. Since there are fewer and fewer pauses, we need to be intentional about creating them.
>Pay attention to our bodies. Usually the body tells us when the pace is getting to fast. When it tells us this, it's time to slow the pace.
>Limit the flow of information. One of the characteristics of our age is the explosion of information we are exposed to. I, for example, am being very leery about joining the E-mail world. I know I would get a lot out of E-mail, but I also would dramatically increase my daily exposure to information. Can I handle it?
The fifth thing that helps me live in time is an awareness of how I spend my leisure time. Spending thirty hours a week in front of the increasingly fast-paced TV is probably not a great way to reduce the feeling of timelock. On the opposite end, absorbing hobbies can make us forget about time all together: a good antidote for feeling timelocked. We could undoubtedly learn something, too, from observant Jews, who take the Sabbath seriously. Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel calls the Sabbath a "sanctuary in time." What a beautiful idea! If I put aside a day each week in which I didn't drive or use other conveniences, in which I didn't work or shop or clean the house, I would surely feel less timelocked. Imagine, a day of just being with family or friends! A final way to be aware of leisure time is to structure vacations so they give us a relief from timelock. In general, for example, a sight-seeing vacation scheduled to the max will not do much for us in the way of timelock relief. I remember such a trip I took to Europe with a college friend: something like six countries in two weeks. I returned home a basket case.
The final thing I recommend for helping rid of us is timelock is maybe the most important and the least done. It is to make sure we take time daily to contemplate our lives, to remember what is most important and to make sure that the lives we are living reflect our deepest values and principles. It is a time to check in with our bodies, to contemplate our relationships, our minds and our spirituality. This allows us to know ourselves, to be more dependent in our living on our own self-awareness than on what others might be thinking about us.
I know the weeks at work when I don't do this are bad ones. I come into the office on Tuesday feeling so overwhelmed with work that I never take the time to reflect on what I really need to be doing for the week. Instead, I run from one to the next like a chicken with its head cut off. Being attentive and mindful takes time. It is time well-spent.
Ultimately, these suggestions for diminishing timelock come down to balance. We need to balance our body, emotions, intellect and spirituality. We need to balance work and home, solitude and community. In the struggle for balance, it is easy to take a wrong step and return to that old timelocked frenzy. The trick is to realize we have taken a mis-step and to strive again for balance. The result is a feeling of wholeness, which in my book is the same thing as salvation.
Berry, Wendell, Selected Poems 1957-1982 (New York: North Point Press, 1984).
Bode, Bruce, "Not Enough Time?"--a sermon preached at the Fountain Street Church, Grand Rapids, MI.
Covey, Stephen, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1989).
Keyes, Ralph, Timelock (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).
Oswald, Roy, Clergy Self-Care (Washington, Alban Institute, 1991).
Utne Reader, January/February 1994 issue on "Too Busy?"
Washington, James M., editor, A Testament of Hope: The Essential
Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. (San Francisco: Harper and Row,
1986).
Copyright 1995 by Roger Bertschausen. All rights reserved.