If there’s one thing I wish for, it would be a pause button. I wouldn’t have exclusive control. But it would be a pause button that would allow myself, and everyone else in the world, time for some serious contemplation and soul-searching with no remorse over the time we’re not spending on other things. I think I, and probably others as well, need to spend more unfettered time doing things that should be done and not worrying about all the things that we don’t really need to do.
I often feel, and I doubt I am alone on this, that if I take a week, or even a day, to just pause away from everything and try to figure it all out, that I am by my inaction harming my own future, or those of others. That by my contemplative inaction I am somehow failing my own potential.
I have to say that when I am fully alone, I am less acutely aware of this feeling of waste than when I am with others. Others who are by day or night doing things. It doesn’t much matter to me what those things are, but I regret my not doing them. Whether that is a reflection of some facet of myself, the others, or a combination of the two is something I will have to leave for another time.
The real crux of this issue is that there is so much I don’t know that could influence how I would act in the coming day if I only knew it. If I better knew how other people had made a positive impact on the world I would be better able to make one myself. If I better knew how people got the job I want, I could take the steps necessary to get it. Rather, I am stuck in the predicament of feeling like I am dallying if I do the research I think could help the process, and feeling like I’m rushing into the field without adequate preparation if I am acting.
I have to admit that though it is not a feeling that only I have, the solution will not cannot come from outside. For until, and possibly even after, scientists discover a way to make our bodies need less sleep, I can say with nearly complete certainty that we’ll always have this feeling when I feel the need to spend some time just thinking.
The fact is that we can’t stop. The world will not stop cold simply so that we can have the time to learn all it’s facets. Our lives will not stop cold simply because we desire them to. We have no choice but to move forward. Doing what we can along the way to assure that we are doing it the best way we can.
That is reality. Like it or not, there’s no way to change it.
2 responses to “On Time”
I take comfort in the fact that Time is the same for everyone. While we are living, nobody has, or gets, any more Time than the next person. No one is ‘getting ahead’ or ‘falling behind’. We are all traveling through time at the exact same rate. Except for maybe Mr. Einstein…
Yes, a pause button would be ideal. I often wish to have time alone just to ponder things from all angles without feeling like I am ‘wasting’ time. There is a perception in our hurried society that every moment has to be productive and because time marches on relentlessly it all just feels like we are hamsters on an exercise wheel. I, for one, want off occasionally.
Thanks for stopping be my blog…I’ll be back.