Time Awareness
I have a lifelong habit of being late. I also have a lifetime of experience trying to be on time, an arsenal of tricks to get me somewhere when I am supposed to be there. None of it has worked, from moving my clocks ahead ten minutes to marking appointments in my calendar as actually taking place earlier than they really are. Now that I have kids, sometimes people nod sympathetically and say in an understanding way that it’s hard to get out of the house with young children. Sometimes helpful the first time I meet up with them, but not again.
I tend to do a lot of self-flogging when I’m rushing off somewhere. I curse myself out on the drive, I yell at myself, I swear I’ll never put myself in this position again.
But then I don’t think about it again. Until the next time. And on and on it goes.
It occurred to me recently that this is the perfect formula for remaining in this pattern. What’s that definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? That’s what I’m doing right now.
I’m realizing that being late, then not thinking about it for the next 23 hours isn’t helpful. That thinking about it *outside* of the late-zone is the key.
Which led me to understand that I have to rearrange those other 23 hours to accommodate timeliness. It’s a full-day process, not something I can take event-by-event.
This is finally an area of healing for myself, something I am ready to shift into, rather than “fix,” which feels just right. Considering this something that I’m working on as opposed to “solving” takes the pressure off and includes the expectation that there will be bumps and twists and turns as I unpack this particular area. Which means I need support, and I’m appreciating the forms that has taken.
I’m seeing how much help I need around this very charged area for me. I’ve got a close friend whom I call with these awarenesses as well as confessing my “misses,” and working with my partner around realistic time parameters has been helpful. I’m also seeing how much of a trainwreck I can create in my schedule if I put too much in one day. One term I’m mulling over is my tendency to “binge” on time, kind of like the way I do this in other areas of my life. I had never realized that before. Recognizing realistic time limits is reinforcing issues around boundaries of what is possible, and what is not. It requires discernment around saying yes to something for a given amount of time, and saying no, or not now, to something else.
Reminds me of my work around clutter. Deciding what’s important and what stays, and what’s no longer important, what goes.
Precisely what my healing work means to me – helping people to discern what’s true *now*, in the deepest ways. And releasing what’s no longer true, what’s no longer a belief or someone’s story, something that no longer represents an authentic self.
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