The least manageable of all things, as it seems…

My dear one,

You hear about this time-management idea all the time. The phrase comes up so frequently, it feels too overused and almost empty. You wonder, what is it that people mean when they say it? You have said it too, and so, to be fair, you ask yourself — what do you mean by that? It sounds like most people you talk to mean it as a way of overseeing projects and tasks, and making sure that all which can be done in the time allotted — gets done. And still you wonder, are they really managing time? Sounds to you more like they are managing tasks. While it would be a neat idea – being able to manage time – it is really just task management, isn’t it? 

Of course you know how important it is to attend to your commitments…

And some people you know are really good at it. You wonder, though, if the better they get at managing tasks, the more they believe that time is what they manage. Sometimes you to find yourself hoping, that if you become really good at getting things done and managing your list of to-do’s, that you will be able to stretch time as needed or make it go faster. Is that what gives people the feeling that they control time?

It would be nice to believe it, but seems to you, time is the least manageable of all things.

What helps you stay focused — if nothing else — is knowing that time is reliable. Despite your perception of it, you know you can always count on those full 60 minutes in an hour, and you know there’ll always be only 24 hours in a day. So the incentive to use it well is right there, consistent, and invariable. If you don’t use it – you know you lose it. You lose it every time you don’t use it. Uncompromising like that, and still somehow comforting in that it is reliable. The only thing you don’t know is how much will be done, because sometimes you feel like you cannot count on yourself.

So what then, you wonder, needs to be managed? Who is showing up consistently and reliably, and who — only sometimes? It’s not that you believe you can manage time, but in wanting to, you are finding something else within your sphere of influence. And that is you, dear one. Even though to think that you could be at ease with time seems equally funny right now, as the idea of being able to manage it, somewhere inside you know that just like matter bends the fabric of space, the gravity of your own commitment will bend time with your presence…

Every time you see it be wasted, you wish that you could use it…

Even if you only got a minute for every hour people around you wasted, you would have enough for many lives and for all of your projects. True. I see that too. And also I ask you, what else is possible?

Whenever we see an opportunity in others, it is an opportunity to see something within ourselves. So, why concern yourself with the time available to others, however they use or misuse it? Unless, of course, you too can see how you could use your own better… 

All you need — including time — is already within you,

~Anima