Today, I want to talk about time and our relationship to time. I won’t be too long, don’t worry. This simple comment should already set your neurons on fire as you are mentally working to figure out what I just insinuated, and are starting to realise what you may have been thinking (although likely unconsciously) as you were reading the first few words of this post. Perhaps you were simultaneously distracted by Facebook notifications, the Youtube video playing in the background or another email to send that you were just reminded of. No harm done. But, if you have experienced any of these, then the following question is more relevant than ever! Have you ever paid close attention to your relationship to time?
Now, I don’t want to talk about how busy our lives are and all the issues this busy-ness triggers. Many people have already done that and undoubtedly much better than I ever can. No, what I want to do is initiate a reflexion in your lovely mind, and plant the seed of a question. A question about time… Bear with me for a moment: what if, when meeting somebody, you were not to ask them the usual suspects? By usual suspects I mean these fairly polite yet often disembodied questions such as “What do you do?”, “Where do you live?”, “Where are you from?”… Let’s be honest here, quite a few people out there asking that are not actually interested in your answer; even well-intentioned people often unconsciously seek how they can connect their own story to your answer rather than pay real attention to what you are about to say.
What if you were to change this gentle habit and instead ask the kind human being you just met: “WHEN do you live?”… errr… Weird? Most likely. Although… Is it really? Think about it for a second.
WHEN do you live?
Although it would be fairly reasonable to reply something along the lines of: “Well, necessarily I live in the present, you oddly bizarre individual”, how much time of your day do you actually spend thinking about a past event or a future hypothetical occurrence? Even if not doing so purposefully, chances are you spend a fair amount of time there, right? Simply because you spend your life in your head, and the human mind likes to time travel. So are you always in the present? Your body is, yes, but your mind? Not so sure… Now, I don’t wish to dive into whether or not it’s good, bad or whatever and attempt to infer from these fruitless debates when we SHOULD live. I simply want to raise a question. When do we live? What is our relationship to time? I think reflecting on this notion can lead to fascinating discoveries for each and every one of us, for ourselves and our own individual experience of life. I don’t believe in one truth, one way of doing things. Therefore I don’t believe there is one “right” relationship to time. However I do believe Choice is an individual responsibility, and we can all improve and progress our capacity to make that Choice, if we ask ourselves the right questions. Today, I thought I would ask you about Time.
You will find below a really interesting and playful insight about the human relationship to time, whether natural or created. It’s 10 minutes long… Have you got time to watch it?
BEN DEPRAZ-BRENNINKMEIJER 
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