Weekly round-up: Is time a myth?
I've spent a lot of time thinking about time this week. Is it real? Are we all kidding ourselves?
Welcome to your weekly round-up of my thoughts, musings, questions and progress on my Rebel Badges. My hope is that something I share with you will resonate with you and so, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. Much love from this cosy corner of the Internet!
Our obsession with time is damaging. In fact, do we really have time at all? I’m a clock watcher-aholic. Guilty. My Apple watch is glued to my wrist. My phone is often by my side. And I enter each room looking for the nearest visible clock - as if, my phone and watch are not sufficient enough. My days are governed by time. My weeks and months are steered by deadlines and goals. My life is summarised as events that happened Before and After life-changing moments. I am very aware of time.
I listened to an audiobook this week Four Thousand Weeks in which the author shares this bold revelation (paraphrased): we walk around each day on auto-pilot, desperate to make the most of our time on Earth. We act as if we possess time in the same way we might possess a home or a car. We cling on to time. The irony is that in our bid to cling to time, we lose it. Time simply is regardless of how we use it. What if in fact, we do not possess time after all?
Mind blown. Deep stuff for a Friday but a profound thought that dramatic although it sounds, might well change our lives. In my bid to hold on to and control my time, I might well be losing the time that lies right in front of me at this very present moment.
‘I don’t have any time for that - I don’t even have time for myself’ We’re all guilty of this. I’m guilty of saying this. Someone asks you to do a favour for them: ‘I’m really sorry, I just don’t have enough time’. Is this always true? Maybe it is. We live in a world where we lead busy lives. Many of us are juggling lots of things. We wear multiple hats. We’re on a treadmill of life and we’re not quite sure how to get off. Is it really true to say that we don’t have enough time? That we don’t have time for ourselves? Perhaps - and in some cases, some of the time, this might well be true - this is simply a myth that we all buy into.
Sometimes if I’m feeling brave, I check my screen time on my phone. My iPhone tells me that my daily screen time average is 3 hours and 40 minutes. This alarmingly is down 15% from last week. I’m going to take a wild guess that for many people, their screen time might well be similar. I don’t mean to tarnish you with the same brush. Maybe your screen time is significantly less. Maybe even significantly more. Much of my income comes from spending time on my phone and communicating with customers and clients. So, naturally, I can justify some of my screen time usage. I am also a human being living in the 21st century in a Digital Age and I enjoy using social media. I enjoy connecting with people online that I wouldn’t ordinarily be able to connect with. Do I need to pick up my phone 145 times a day like I did yesterday? (Yikes!) No. Definitely not.
I’m not shaming myself for this. As much as I wouldn’t shame or judge someone who has the same realisation: many of us spend a significant amount of time on our phones. This is neither good nor bad. Doesn’t make one person a hero or the other a failure. Someone’s screen time - or lack of screen time - doesn’t determine their self-worth. But I do wonder how true it is when I find myself saying: ‘I don’t have enough time for that’
Maybe instead of picking up my phone, I could smile at a stranger. Maybe instead of looking at the profile of a friend of a friend of a friend (We. ALL. Do. This. And if you don’t, someone is likely doing it to you!), I could send a well-thought-out message to someone I haven’t spoken to for months. Maybe instead of flicking through a series of apps in a mechanical fashion, I could take a pause, notice where I am in this moment and just check: am I holding in my breath? I could finally breathe in, take a deep sigh and reconnect with The Now.
When I find myself cringing at what I share online, I remember this: someone might need to hear what I have to say I like posting on social media. I enjoy writing. I enjoy sharing daily affirmations on my Instagram stories. I enjoy making reels and TikTok videos about work-life balance and how self-care has changed my life. I do forget sometimes that people might and do actually see what I post. My mind will sometimes overanalyse and second-guess what people might be thinking: ‘Oh good for her *sarcastic tone* we can’t all spend the morning before work by the beach’. I am of course old enough now to know how harmful it can be to imagine what people might be thinking. If it brings me joy and doesn’t intentionally upset or harm anyone then I’m happy to share it. What I forget though, is that sometimes someone reads or sees what I’m posting and it might well prove helpful to them.
Two people over the course of this month have reached out to me and said that something I’ve said or shared online has been helpful to them. ‘I’ve been watching your Tiktok videos’ (phew because I assumed it was random people accidentally stumbling across them!). I’m not sharing this to shout out about me and how wonderful I am and how my content is going viral and I’m changing lives. Absolutely not. I’m sharing this because every one of us has a story. Every one of us has been through ‘something’. Have you ever posted something online that feels vulnerable and suddenly you’re receiving messages from people who have experienced the same thing? Every one of us has a story. Every story has a lesson.
We don’t need to necessarily stand on the street corners shouting out about the trauma we’ve been through. We don’t need to necessarily post essays on Facebook about everything we go through. But sometimes, in some places and in some ways there is power in sharing our stories.
Rebel Badge progress report
Writers Badge in progress. To write once a week on my blog - of which you’re reading!
Investors Badge in progress. Tracking Disney, Netflix, Tesco, Meta, Legal and General and Amazon on the stock market. Listening to Girls That Invest on Audible: 4 hours and 37 minutes remaining. Subscribed to the Girls That Invest newsletter.
Linguistics Badge in progress. Spending 15-20 minutes a day learning French using the Duolingo app. Currently on Section 1 Unit 3.
Three new badges started this week Stargazing, Readers and Style.
On my book shelf this week
I’m late to the party but I’m finally on the Colleen Hoover bandwagon. About 3/4 of the way through Reminders of Him and loving it! An ‘easy’ read, a page-turner and has lived up to expectations.