The Truth of Time
Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending time with my best friend at West beach in Laguna Beach, CA. One of my last times, if not my last time, being on the beach before my husband and I make the trip to our new home in Texas. It’s been a while since my friend and I have spent time together and what made it even more excellent was the soft sand, crisp wave breaks, and the warm sun rays the poked through the occasional cloud. Minus my red lobster sunburn on my entire backside, the day was spent well with deep, meaningful conversations and innocent vulnerability.
We got to speaking about a plethora of topics, such as baggage we had both been carrying, belief systems, God, and life as a whole. While our time spent together was intimate and worth keeping private and our own, I felt called to share about one particular topic that has seemed to be a reoccurring theme surfacing and grabbing my attention more often than not, and that is—
The Truth of Time.
Despite Mercury being in the microwave again (lol), her and I have both found ourselves, as well as so many others in the world, currently feeling the weight on our shoulders. Anxiety has been more prominent than not lately for the two of us, and with so many big shifts, transitions, and life-changing events taking place for each of us, we notice our minds getting lost and stuck in the imagination of “what-ifs'' and distorted thinking, once again. To give yourself grace, it is so normal and so human and so easy to find yourself returning back to “The Maze” of the mind in times of turbulence. Now, “The Maze '' always seems to shift and transform since the previous times entering, as it will never always be the exact same level of darkness that we may once knew it as, because we may be familiar with this place. It’s not new, it’s not uncharted territory, and we have the roadmap to make our way back out, but that doesn’t make it any less exhausting, overwhelming, and oftentimes, scary.
But one thing I’ve been taking note of lately is Time. How when in the midst of turbulence, when we get caught up in the cognitive distortions, the times of stress and overwhelm, and ultimately chaos, we as humans tend to find ourselves trying to do whatever it may be to “escape.” Whether that be running from our problems, suppressing our problems, numbing ourselves with substances, or all three, the intensity of the present moment, when turbulence is present, can cause us to consciously or unconsciously flee like a bat out of a cave.
But what happens when we continue to try to escape what’s happening right now, is that all of a sudden, within a blink of an eye, time has passed. “Where did the time go?” I often wonder. How could so much time have passed already, and where was I while it did?
You see, we know that while time may be an illusion, we still have only a limited amount as human beings. From the moment we are born to the moment we die, there is this space in between that we have the choice to either be in it, or rather, flee from it.
I reflect back on the year 2021 as this year was by far the most chaotic, tempestuous time in my life. I had been suffering with my onset of OCD and spent so much of this “time” lost in my own thoughts, disconnected from my body, and ultimately, life itself. Looking back at my suffering—which rolled over into the year of 2022– I had spent the majority of this time somewhere else, meaning I was not present, because I wanted to escape my misery.
Fast forward to today, April 27, 2023, I look back on this time and ask myself again, “Where did the time go?”
Our time here on planet Earth is minimal, and before you know it, we are older, new versions of Self, with little to no enjoyment of the process, if lost in the storm clouds.
The truth is, as my friend and I discussed with our toes in the sand, that all this “time” we spend in the thinking mind, we actually are giving permission to time to pass us by. While we navigate our way through “The Maze” of the mind, we are choosing to let each moment pass us, one moment at a time.
To put it forwardly, time is invaluable, and there is no getting it back. And even in the midst of chaos, anxiety, stress, and fear, instead of allowing these experiences to steal our precious time by keeping us locked in our minds, can we be with these experiences, in our body, no matter how uncomfortable they present themselves to be?
Our experiences are vastly changing day by day, and while not one experience, feeling, and sensation will ever last a lifetime, can we simply embrace all that is, in this moment, without trying to escape it, no matter how painful it may be?
The Truth of Time is that we have only so much of it. We can spend all our time in our minds, lost in the trance of destruction and darkness and trying to escape, until we run out of it. Or, we can be with destruction, be with the full range of emotions that is being human, and return back to the truth—the truth that is right here, right now, in this present moment of time.
I’ll leave you with this as I nourish my burnt flesh with coconut oil and aloe.
