June 2024

June Thought of the Month

"The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot."

~ Michael Altshuler

The year is nearly half over already. While time moves pretty much at the same pace it always has, we perceive it as flying by. We spend too much of our present dealing with the future. This has made us hyperaware of time and its passing.

The modern world practically requires us to live simultaneously in the now and the future to a certain extent. We can’t go anywhere without a watch or smart phone that we check regularly. Everyone spends time maintaining calendars to keep track of meetings, events, and appointments a year or more in advance.

Dealing with or just thinking about our tomorrows eats up today’s time, which leaves us with the impression that there just isn't enough of it. That awareness leads to behaviors like multitasking and staying up too late to cram more tasks into a day. This can have adverse effects on us such as increased anxiety, elevated stress levels, and sleep deprivation, none of which is good for our health.

But we can mitigate these effects by making time to ignore time. Regularly doing something fun or interesting or restful where the clock doesn’t exist can help us reset our perceptions, at least for a while. A couple of hours before you go to bed, put your devices down (set them charging for the next day) and focus on winding down — listen to your favorite music, read, work on a hobby, anything that relaxes you. If possible, do it in a room without a clock. This should help to mute your awareness of time, soothe your mind, and ease the tensions that build up throughout the day.

After a while, our thoughts and body will fall into the rhythms that lead to better sleep each night. Over time, we will regain a more realistic sense of how much time we have in a day and use it more efficiently. May we all become the pilots of our time, not the other way around.

[Thought and image design by Elaine C. Oldham]