Time

Time – A paradox really. We have so much time yet, we don’t have enough of it. The one thing that can never come back or money can buy, no matter how rich you are! Time is the one thing I feel I do not have enough of. I feel that it is constantly running away from me, and I so desperately wish it would slow down. Every passing moment, time is only leading me to that final destination of death. There’s this overwhelming sense of sadness that I am unable to express in words. It’s the one feeling that is so inexplainable and I struggle to articulate. I talk about time because it has taken me a long time to coherently write this post, funnily enough, because I couldn’t formulate my thoughts on this topic and felt I didn’t have time to write for my blog – the paradox.

Time doesn’t feel significant when you’re in the routine of life. I feel that day to day, our routines do not allow us to reflect on how significant of a topic time is. We only focus on the immediate tasks at hand that need to be completed. I am only able to think about time the minute I stop and take a few moments to myself. Time is the one thing that comes to the forefront often. For me, I feel that there is never enough time to do everything I aspire to do. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t do the things I feel so passionately about. It’s just that I feel I don’t have ENOUGH time to do the things I feel so passionately about. 

Time is a complexity because despite having the same twenty-four hours in a day as everybody else, I feel that so many of us fail to complete things that relate to our greater purpose in life. I am unable to determine what it is about time that makes me feel like it is escaping me. Time feels like a melancholy because I feel that as I get older, I realise just how quickly it is passing me by, and there is this sense of overwhelming sadness about how precious and sacred time really is. In the blink of an eye, you get to an age where you spend a lot of time reminiscing about life. Maybe this is the reason that elderly people smile when they look at young people because they understand the complexity of time. This is what elderly people must feel like when it comes to reminiscing on the past, realising that life has passed them by so quickly. Sometimes I wonder if I will look back and wonder whether I did enough with my time. Will I feel that my life had meaning and purpose and I fulfilled that purpose?

As humans, I feel that we are constantly chasing time away, rather than just being present and enjoying every moment of our lives. We are always looking forward to the next thing that will happen, and I can admit I am guilty of this. I appreciate that enjoying every moment of our lives is impossible because that is not what humans are designed to do (we wouldn’t know what enjoyment was if we never felt anything else) – but if you think of it in the context of how one day, these moments where we wanted time to pass quickly for whatever reason, is often the time we so desperately want back, it is this thought that immediately slows me down. 

The sad truth is that time escapes us all. It’s just that most people don’t think deep enough about what their time means. I started thinking so deeply about time and it has taken me quite some time to come up with thoughts on how this subject makes me feel. I write this with overwhelming feelings – some feelings of happiness that I appreciate time so much and am self-aware about how this topic impacts me to an extent. Some feelings of sadness that are difficult to express. More often than not, we spend our time not living in the present. Living in the present is so important to really make the most of all we have today. I forgot that all the time I was worrying about how little time I have, I was living in anxiety. I complained to my friends about never having enough time and I recognise now, that I started feeling this way because I wasn’t doing enough of what I loved doing – like writing, learning, reading, growing, and focusing on self-development. I wanted more time in the day and started wishing that each day could be forty-eight hours or that I didn’t need to sleep so I could have more time. Work took over my life and I wasn’t taking care of myself because I would spend all my time focused on just work. So many of us are guilty of this and we don’t even realise it is what causes our misery. 

The anxiety was taking over my life and then one day, I had an epiphany! The epiphany was that you can never have enough time no matter what you do because there is so much we want to do with our time. I worked on accepting this and found a great podcast by Jay Shetty (On Purpose), which changed my mindset. He mentions that time is something we cannot control. I knew this all along, but I needed to hear this from someone else to recognise that I am not alone in how I feel about the topic of time. He also mentioned that time is something we must create. I had this sudden awakening that although I am not in control of time, I am however, in control of how I use that time and I was the only one that could create the time to do the things I wanted to do.

I am at the start of this journey of creating time for the things I love doing, despite being so busy. It’s a choice we make on how we spend our time, so I made choices. I started waking up one hour earlier than usual because the morning is when I am the most productive. Each day of the week, I focus on a task I love doing and do that for the first hour before I do anything else. I’ve only just started doing this recently, but I have already noticed a difference. Some of those things include reading, reflective writing, online courses, listening to a podcast or audiobook and making notes, writing a gratitude list and of course, focusing on blog writing. In such a short space of time and creating a little time for what I want to be doing, I have noticed that my day is so much more productive, and I feel so much more energetic and positive. 

Looking back now, it all seemed so simple. All I needed to do was create the time. But as humans, I’m sure we can all appreciate that when there is this overwhelming sense of sadness that clouds our mind, it can be hard to see clearly. Don’t get me wrong – I still feel a little sadness when I think about time. But I just don’t feel that I am wasting as much anymore because I am on the road to figuring out what time means for me, spending time on the things I love and enjoying the wonder of where this journey of time will take me. 

Until next time. 

Yours, 

The Unveiled Reflector x