“Time is just a construct”
Have you heard this phrase?
Depending on who you have heard say it – and under what context – your skin, like mine may crawl, head nodding in feigned agreement, eyes may glaze over, brain zone out, and an inability to shake feeling something is amiss and not right.
Vast majority of conversations I where this phrase is heard – this has been my reaction.
I recognized it, until recently, as a phrase used only by chronically irresponsible to object to criticism, by oblivious intellectually lazy and the insufferably vain reassuring themselves of their invulnerability to loss.
This phrase and my sense of discomfort at hearing it, especially within a non-judgmental domain, the therapy room, got me curious. So, I took a closer, more critical look. What is my relationship to “time” as demonstrated by my use of it in my everyday language expressions.
I have an evolving relationship to the concept of time – as do most people.
I can’t honestly say I know when I began to use the word in a regular way or what it meant to me at all at a very young age. As a child time was the end of the magic and a cue for me to go to bed or my way of learning someone was in a hurry. Somewhere in my early education when I learned there was a means of measuring something called time. I could then apply it to a great many number of things. The time it took or the time until. I learned that I could be about time, in time, just in time, and even out of time. I could be ahead of it or behind it. I could run out of it, you could bide it, buy it, be touched and ravaged by it. I found out I could kill it. I learned that it flies. That it could be ripe and that it would always tell. The older I grew I was accused of wasting and squandering time. I was taught the importance of being on time and how I needed to manage time. That there was a difference between your time and my time and apparently a wide difference in how much you would pay me for mine and what you would accept if I paid you for yours. There were different types of time even. Biological, chronological, geological and my favourite space as time.
Time is now our favourite bitch. Time has become the whipping boy for our lack of courage, awareness, authority, or our responsibility over specificity in our speech and clarity in our communication of our own thought. It is a rug under which our unexamined thought can be swept. A fog where our intentions can be hidden. A fun house mirror to distort our meaning. Strings we attach to others to manipulate and orchestrate our own secret agenda.
IT is my suggestion that we examine our relationship to the use of this word as it has so widely been used it has little structural integrity to uphold for society or the individual anything of good purpose.
I feel like I am sounding like a Victorian so let me bring my point forward and to a practical application.
When I sit for an annual review with HR and see that I need to work on my time management I can agree easily without much resistance. After all this time we are managing here. EVERYONE struggles with managing time. AS if it were a flock of feral alley cats. IT is an intangible thing that at best is a quantified list of articulated behaviors or best practices – and at worst a catch phrase a HR person hopes you won’t be able to define either. IT is something external that you will be less criticized by – it isn’t you after all. Everyone signs the dotted line and all go about their next business. Conflict avoided, no one offended, no resolution, total conservation of energy. No progress under the guise of progression. Used to ruse.
So, if I can’t use the word time management then what should I be saying then?
You. Manage you. You are the thing that needs managing not the time. Manage your priorities Manage your habits. Manage your choices. Manage yourself. The time isn’t the thing that needs your attention you are. You need you to own you.
“Time will tell” = I’m too uninvested in the truth to exert the energy proving my point.
“About time you got here” = I am tired of waiting for you
“No worries, I’ve got the time” I’m willing to allow you to disrespect me and I’m less important than I want to be in your mind and I’m too afraid to admit it.
I could break down almost every use of the work in a phrase this way.
Am I calling for the eradication of the word from the English lexicon – no (but is there an application for that? I have some others I wouldn’t mind submitting). No, I’m hardly a champion for language cleansing or even all the adept at language using. What I am suggesting is just a thought exercise.
For one day. IF that is too much then for two hours. Become aware of your use of the word time. Set the intention. When you hear it and can catch it ask yourself these questions. What am I really wanting to say? What do I really mean? What am I trying to avoid saying? What would change if I said that?
Try it out – see what come to your awareness when you allow yourself to step out from behind the ruse of time.
I’m interested in hearing what you learn from this experiment so please feel free to share – reach out. IF you would like to learn more about your relationship to yourself and improve it and have questions or are interested in counseling or coaching services send me an email David@reamtexas.com. No one wins a battle against one’s self.
