Stop Living Against The Clock
“I don’t have time for anything”, “Life is getting out of hand”, “I must do my best in the shortest time possible”, “I wish the day had more than 24 hours” … Do these phrases sound familiar to you? Surely yes, because we are so aware of the hours that pass, of the time that is consumed, of catching something abstract that we stop enjoying to live against the clock.
Living against the clock makes us subscribe to a constant state of anxiety. There are no moments to lose, that’s why we cram them with activities that many times will not make us enjoy, but that fill those moments that we are so afraid of that they pass without being productive. In the end, we are wasting time, consuming it without really feeling and living it.
The price of tomorrow
Does the movie “In time” sound familiar to you ? In it, people did not earn money, but time with which they could buy everything. Every hour they had to know how to manage it so that it would give them to pay for the purchase, the transport and, also, to be able to live: until they did not work the next day they would not be able to collect their most precious time again.
This film is a clear example of what it is like to live against the clock and a great metaphor for how time passes before our eyes while we live only to work, eat and sleep. We do not have minutes to lose, every second that passes brings us closer to death. However, when it arrives we can have the feeling that nothing we have done previously has been worth it.
Luckily, our life does not depend on time, so that good management involves dedicating part of this precious resource to what we want, without overwhelming ourselves if we are more or less productive. If we don’t do this, we will start living on automatic pilot. We will stop enjoying the flavors of food or giving reality a chance to surprise us. We abandoned that child that one day we went to become people who consume time without enjoying it.
Being aware of the clock causes the passage of time to choke us, either because we want it to pass faster or because we want it to pass slower. It’s like a prophecy! Isn’t it true that when we were little the hours passed without anxiety? This happened because we were aware of the present, of experiencing every sensation and we were not so concerned about the past and the future.
Perhaps yes, the terrible passage of the years, the responsibility we have with our family or the selfishness of dedicating a few care and pampering to ourselves. Living against the clock, at its core, is a real waste of time. Well, this is to be enjoyed and not to barter in which we always sell.
Life is added to experiences and if we live against the clock in the end we will end up completing an infinite list of activities that we would like to do, at some point, somewhere, that is not now, that is not here. It’s a shame, because if we wanted to, we would have all the time in the world to dedicate to the people we say we love, to those things we claim to enjoy and to all those situations that we would like to experience.
Let’s not put off our wishes. Life is here and now. No more excuses that keep us in our boring, monotonous comfort zone and increasingly full of things to do that consume our precious hours. It is the moment to live fully and to feel and appreciate all that we have. As Ira Rodrigues says, “let’s savor every second as if it were the best banquet that life offers us.”
Images courtesy of Alexander Borusk, Michael Cheval
