“I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date.” – The White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
My sister-in-law was over the other day and told me that ever since she was out sick for a week about 6 weeks ago, she’s felt like she is always running behind. Then she listed all the things she hasn’t done and it struck me that none of them had to do with being on time, but instead were all about what she wanted to do with her time.
It struck a chord in me because I’ve been reading Alan Burdick’s book Why Time Flies (thank you for the suggestion, Dr. Stein) and he talks about all the different ways we use the word time:
Duration – the ability to determine how much time has elapsed between two specific events or to accurately estimate when the next event will occur.
Temporal order – the ability to discern the sequence in which events occurred.
Tense – the ability to discriminate between the past, present, and future, and the understanding that tomorrow lies in a different temporal direction than yesterday.
The “feeling of nowness” – the subjective sense of time passing through us “right now,” whatever that is
Why Time Flies by Alan Burdick
It’s been my goal lately to try not to hurry even when really busy which speaks to that “feeling of nowness” that Alan Burdick describes. It also resonates with an idea that we need to distinguish between what is important to us as opposed to what seems urgent that Gary Fultz wrote about in his post A Good Interruption Solution? “We are all in a different place between the urgent and the important. Let me suggest there is probably not enough time in life to do all of both.“
With all those ideas about “time,” it inspired my post for the Pointless Overthinking blog this week: The Quality versus Quantity of Time.
(featured photo from Pexels)
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