Tag: time
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“The Space to Be a Person,” or Why You Need Slack Time
Call it idleness, slack, non-action, pausing, or just plain “doing nothing.” Whatever you call it, too frequently today it is skipped, degraded, and seen as a less than noble use of time. The United States of America — where I was born and have lived all my life — is especially known for its “never slow down” mentality. […]
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Seeing Through Nouns
Nouns are a part of speech most people understand, and they’re common across all human languages. And yet we know of very fews nouns that aren’t simply an aggregate of a number of other nouns. Further, those aggregates of other nouns are, by the very nature of their compound-ness, temporary. Recently someone presented an idea that […]
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It’s Just About Time and Attention
It seems that we only have control over two things in our life: the hours allotted to us, and the things we put our attention on in those hours. But that’s a fact that’s easy to miss. We worry about how pretty we are. About how smart we are. About how kind we are. About […]
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The Hourglass Neck of Now
Time expands out away from us in either direction. In the present moment, right now, there aren’t all that many possibilities you need to consider and worry about; there isn’t really much to do. Now is simple because it’s so close. As we get further away — in either the past or future direction — we get the option […]
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The Long Game of Kindness
Living creatures, by their nature, find it hard to think, plan, and act for the long term. For millennia life on this planet has survived because it acts, first and foremost, to do what it is best for it in the short term. This near-term greed allows living creatures to keep being alive, and that’s […]
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Living in Retrospect
“In retrospect, it was a bad idea.” “One day we’ll look back at this and laugh.” We all understand that our views on things are not fixed forever. That looking back on things with some critical distance from our actions we’ll likely see more clearly what was going on and what the wiser course of […]
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No Going Back
Sometimes it hits. It’s rarely anticipated. That desire to feel that feeling you felt in the past. Maybe it was your first day of school, or your first kiss, or your first home run. Maybe it was that night when you did that thing, or that afternoon when you did that other thing. Maybe it […]
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OPW: “The Future”
Today on Other People’s Words, a beautiful poem by Wesley McNair called “The Future.” On the afternoon talk shows of America the guests have suffered life’s sorrows long enough. All they require now is the opportunity for closure, to put the whole thing behind them and get on with their lives. That their lives, in […]
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On Time
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 […]