We Are Time

My blog post this week is a little late, but I have a good excuse: I am learning how to waste time. That probably isn’t exactly accurate. I am unlearning time as a resource and learning that I am “time.”

My new realization about time stems from what I’ve read so far in Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with time, working to improve my productivity and eschewing any perceived waste of time. Burkeman says that we “are a limited amount of time” (59), not that we have a limited amount of time. As such, time is not a resource to be used but who we are. He insists that rather than striving to fit more in, we need to develop the “anti-skill” of resisting the urge to do more. Instead, we should ask ourselves more frequently if what we’re doing is what we really want to be doing.

So for the past two weekends, I have accompanied my husband to a movie theater to see two movies, one I wanted to see and the other I didn’t, simply because he wanted to see them both. I decided that spending time with my husband, even if it meant sitting in a movie theater for two and half hours through a movie I didn’t necessarily want to see, was important and a good use of my time. Was it productive and efficient? No. But if I am “time,” and relationships are important to me, then it was a good choice. I invested in my own happiness rather than tying myself to a list of to-do’s that never seem to be done.

When we understand that we are time, and time is limited (maybe 4000 weeks if we live to age 80), we can come to terms with our inability to do everything we want or feel we must do. We can focus on doing what is important and relax about letting go of the rest.