The other morning, after a long shift at work, I had a great conversation with my friend Tim as we waited for our time at work to be over. I can't remember how we managed to slide onto the subject of concepts of time, but we did.
Tim talked about how on a daily basis, for just about all his life, he has had no concept of time. He understands time counted, but its regimentation is lost to him. He is one of those people that lives in space, not in time. Further into the conversation he talked about how this made him feel like an outsider and how it challenged him to see things the way others see them. Tim said he needed solid relationships to ground him to time.
My interjection to this conversation came from a Buddhist perspective. In Buddhism, there is a base function of "form is emptiness; emptiness is form". This is a simple sentence, but a drastically hard concept to swallow on a daily basis. It requires one to let go of time and even sometimes space to live in a place that is built on the fluid idea that everything is connected, there is no beginning and no end. Everything exists and does not exist simultaneously.
It seemed to me that those of us who try to live in some amount of awareness have a goal to live in a way that comes naturally to Tim. He lives in the present with little worry of the past or the future. I am one of those, for most of my life, who has been grounded too much in what was and what will be. When you live in such a place you have little time to be present with the life happening before you. You can miss the simplicity of clouds moving across the sky, bird song, laughter, small beauties and sorrows, and what other people are trying to tell or show you.
The American culture is one of having more....all the time. We must go faster, get more, live harder. It is not difficult to get caught up in this or with people telling what you should achieve in your life. How many of us get bullied into living someone else's dream or expectation of us?
This idea of living in the present has been an achievement of mine. It has been an expectation that I want to live up to. Today I sat down to meditate and flipped to a page in the Dalai Lama's "The Art of Happiness" and came to this passage, aptly:
"Dealing with expectations is really a tricky issue. If you have excessive expectations without a proper foundation, then that usually leads to problems. On the other hand, without expectation and hope, without aspiration, there can be no progress. Some hope is essential. So finding the proper balance is not easy. One needs to judge each situation on the spot."--Dalai Lama
To me, being able to have enough balance in which to achieve expectations comes from the balance and awareness of time and space. Too much time leads to not being able to live in the present. Too much space leads to lack of awareness.
This idea of time and space that Tim brought up has really struck a cord in me. I was glad I was present in that moment and soaked in what he had to say. We all need more moments like that where we share the higher, spiritual knowledge that we house in our bodies. It gives perspective and openness.
Aleathia
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