Time Wise

After a long hiatus of sorts, I am back. It surely was a long pause but it was just a comma and not a coma :) Today I want to share with you what I have learned over the last couple of years about my Life, about any Life actually. If it gets too long, I might have to divide it into two or three posts.

What according to you is the most important thing about Life? Is it Love, Wealth, Compassion or Time we spend here. I always believed it was the Time and kept seeking sources to figure out how and why we spend this time on earth. I read many biographies to check whether the greats have figured it out, but all that I read in my growing up years only confirmed that time is the most important resource we have and that at the end of Life, most of the souls recall back on their lives and wish they had more time to revisit their life and do what they missed out on. Why does everyone say that? Why is it never enough? Probably because we fill it with things that really don't matter; or spend it with people we really don't love, or keep it busy doing things that we really don't enjoy and hence at the end of it we want more time to reflect on all that we did and do otherwise.

So, is Time the most important resource we have. It is a valuable resource, yes, but there is something that is significantly more important than Time. Let's explore.

Modern day life is completely incomplete without its connection to Time. Think for a moment: from morning alarms, mobiles, tablets, televisions, laptops to microwave, oven, car, fitness gadgets & all the other advanced technologies that we can think of, seem incomplete if they don't operate with the exact time. The time we spend eating, sleeping, exercising, bathing, working, cooking, vacationing and even doing things we love are always monitored by the limits of time. I once tried to spend a day without tracking time, just as an experiment, but I totally failed at it because I was operating in the real world with real people who are constantly running on time. What is Time then? To most of us, it is simply a unit that measures the duration we spend on this earth doing myriad things day after day. We all know and take it for granted, that our time here on earth is limited and that all of us will die someday, but no one knows or cares to think how close or far the last day is. There is a famous quote 

"If you live each day as if it was your last, some day you'll most certainly be right."

It doesn't mean we should think of death all the time, but being aware of it surely helps, as it makes life's choices so much easier. Here's how...

Tomorrow when you wake up, you will spend the day like any other day and optimistically fall asleep at night sure to wake up the day after tomorrow. Now, hope not, but if you knew that the next 24 hours are going to be your last, you would surely spend it more wisely. You will spend it doing what you love without squandering even the smallest unit of the left time; you would rather spend time with those who love you and who you like being with than with someone who doesn't care; would you then spend 2 hours on shopping things you don't really need or would you rather donate that money to the cause you always cared about; would you then speak loving kind words to people around you or would you waste it in an argument or whining in remorse? I can go on but I think you got my point. The same amount of time can have a whole different meaning if your awareness shifts its context. The same amount of time can be spent mindlessly if you are not aware of it being lost forever. 

How we perceive time also seems varied. The same amount of time seems colossal when we spent it doing things we do not enjoy and we are always falling short on time that brings us joy. You also remember every minute detail of the enjoyed time but never of the time that is constantly tracked to end fast. Long road trips are more fun when we enjoy the journey as against those where we count every minute to our destination. This is also true about the books we all read. The point is, the experience of time changes under so many different circumstances. How then is Time the most important? After dwelling over this for months, I have come to believe that ATTENTION/ AWARENESS is the most precious ability that we are gifted with. It is an ability that allows us to use our precious time wisely.

Almost everything in our Life takes place on time prescribed by our frenzied overflowing calendars and constantly ticking clock, but never according to our awareness and desire. We hardly pay attention to what we feel through our senses every moment of our day. At this point, let's take the  'Time' out of the equation here. Now, all we are left with are moments. One moment follows another. What we do in this moment most definitely affects what happens in the next. It only makes sense then that we focus on this passing moment for now and not worry about the last moment or the next one because in thinking about it we only lose the precious present. Let's look at some simple day to day examples.

We check our office mails/whatsapp/some political news while having breakfast thus losing an opportunity to enjoy the meal and the company we have at the table;  at times we deny our children of a relaxed bedtime story because if we do comply with their pleads, they would apparently get late to school the next day; we postpone calling our loved ones because we are too busy with our own lives and assume they will always be there to catch up with; we postpone vacations to have better ones once we have saved enough; we do not exercise in younger days because we think it is so much more important to give our career, family, and kids a priority; we don't believe in regular medical examination because the schedule seems too pessimistic for healthy people like us; we fight, we argue and take the baggage with us forever for reasons we don't ever care to find out!! You and I together can surely come up with many more examples to justify how we put things for later without being mindful of their beauty in that moment and when that moment hits us later, we go down a guilt spiral. We think of all the possibilities that would have changed the circumstances somehow; like why we didn't make that call; only if we had spent more time together; wish we had not been so rude; what if we had only paid more attention. Clearly, there is no point in spending those moments in remorse. Instead, we must learn our lessons so that we do not face such moments again.

Here's what I tried in order to develop my awareness. There is a chrome extension called the Death clock that calculates the time we are left with (by averaging out some inputs) and keeps ticking and showing us actually how fast the time actually ticks away. Clock ticking in reverse always has a better effect on our conscience precisely because it tells us what we are left with. The same amount of time suddenly seems much more important :) Like the 10-9-8-7....of a satellite launch or the reverse count that has a better effect on kids than the normal 1-2-3. It might seem pessimistic to look at the death clock and it might not really be accurate or even close to the truth, but when we see how fast the time is actually ticking away, we tend to pay more attention to every moment we spend on this earth. I did this experiment on myself and it worked. You may also want to go through this amazing (must read) blog, https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/10/100-blocks-day.html, based on a similar concept. It is not easy, in fact, it is very difficult to accept that the time gone is the time lost if we don't live it being fully alive. I remember what Steve Jobs said when he had his first tryst with death,

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Death is very likely the single best invention of life."

I strive to make the most of my time by being aware of how I spend it, who I spend it with. I try to treat my moments how a miser would treat his money. I pause several times a day to check whether I am doing what I really want to do in that moment and whether I am doing it mindfully. By mindfully I mean if I am fully immersed in whatever it is that I am doing with all my senses. If I am having a conversation, I make sure I listen with all my attention; when I am cooking, I cook with all my senses; when I do yoga I do it for the pleasure it brings me. I stick to doing one thing at a time and just for the reason of doing it and not for its outcome. Research has proven that when we indulge in multi-tasking (as I used to for a long long time), we don't work on many things at a time, but our brain does to and fro as many times as we make the shift. We only tire ourselves that way by stressing our brain. So I make it a point to stick to one task at a time, soak in the moment till it is complete in itself. Although I wish that this happens all the time, it doesn't. It takes  effort , perseverance and patience, but at least I have made a good start. Seneca says 'On the Shortness of Life' 

" The part of Life we live (in awareness) is small, for all the rest of existence is not Life, but merely Time"

There are small meaningful daily rituals that I try and practice to live in the moment. I will share them with you in my next post. For now, just pause and bring awareness into your present moment, because 

" We all have two Lives. The second one starts when we realize we only have one" :)