A friend of mine who travels a lot
told me recently that a couple of weeks ago she was in the check-in line in the
airport in Amsterdam and the guy ahead of her was just losing it over some problem with his ticket or his flight. When my friend got to the counter herself she
said something to the airline clerk about the guy’s behavior and the woman said
that that had been happening a lot lately, way more than it used to – people really
losing it over relatively minor travel
problems. In fact, she said, it was a
noticeable trend; other people who worked in the airport had noticed it too
during the last year.
“Why
do you think it’s happening?” my friend asked her. “And what do you think passengers can do to
keep from getting so upset over traveling problems?”
The
woman gave my friend a one-word answer:
“Mindfulness.” She went on to say
that most of the people she waits on don’t seem to be in the moment at all; in
their minds they’re already in the next place, the place they’re flying to, and
if anything gets in the way of their going there right now, they get really,
really angry.
I
nodded when my friend said all that: It
makes perfect sense. It also, I thought,
has major implications for harnessing time.
Since I’ve been
planning my days a la my harnessing time system – sitting down first thing in
the morning or at any point during the day and deciding how to use the time
I’ve got – I’ve become a lot more able to be present in the day and in the
moment. I’ve always thought of
mindfulness as the ability to be present in whatever’s going on around or
inside me, instead of, say, being lost in my thoughts, my worries, my
projections about who said what to who yesterday or what I should do tomorrow
or should be doing right now et cetera. I still think of mindfulness that way,
and I’ve always wanted more of it in my life, have always known intuitively
that being present in the moment was the solution to just about all my
problems. What’s changed since I’ve been
harnessing time is what I think about how you can achieve mindfulness.
I used to think of
mindfulness as a state of consciousness that I could and should achieve, more
or less permanently, if I tried – tried more, tried harder – if I would only stop
forgetting all about mindfulness and lapsing back into not-mindfulness. But no matter how hard I tried to remember
to be mindful, I kept forgetting. And
trying to be mindful didn’t work either, because whenever I try to think or
feel anything it automatically slips away from me.
What I’ve gotten
from harnessing time is a set of tools that I can pick up and use no matter
what my state of mind is. Using the
tools changes my state of mind with no further effort on my part. That way I sidestep the whole
trying-cancels-out-letting-go-and-just-being conundrum. (There’s another tool I use to get to
mindfulness too – a certain writing exercise I’ve stumbled on -- but that’s a
different subject for another day and maybe for a different blog spot.) The mindfulness I get from harnessing time is
the mindfulness of being where I am in time instead of being somewhere else in
the past or the future. I might not
always be aware of everything around me in the present moment – the light in
the room, the sound of birds outside my window, how my body feels as I sit here
in my chair -- but I’m definitely living in the present -- in the day, the
hour, the minute where I am – instead of projecting myself into the future, like
that guy in the airport in Amsterdam.
And there’s a much better chance that I’ll be aware of everything around
me too.
Harnessing time gives
me the ability to do one thing at a time.
At any given moment during the day I’m grounded in what I’m doing and I
know when I’m going to stop doing that and start doing something else. I know how much time I actually have to do
what I’m doing, and if I start to feel rushed I look at what time it is and at my
plan and decide whether or not I do actually have enough time to do what I’m
doing. (Usually I do have enough time –
I’m just afraid that I don’t.) And if something
takes longer than I thought it would – if a flight is delayed or something -- I
simply recalibrate. All of that gives
me a much better chance of relaxing, getting peaceful, and being present in the
moment, maybe even looking around me and seeing what’s there. Because rushing and all the feelings that go
with it – anxiety, irritation, anger, even outright rage -- is really just a
matter of trying to get somewhere faster than you can actually go there. And if you know where you’re going to be for
the next twenty minutes or hour or three hours or whatever, then you have a lot
better chance of actually settling down and being where you are.
Lately I’ve been
noticing another advantage of my harnessing-time-induced awareness in the
present moment. I’ve got a lot of stuff
coming up in the next couple of months:
teaching, public speaking, traveling so I can teach and speak in other
places – that kind of stuff, and while I’m grateful that I get to do it all, I
also feel a little overwhelmed by it all, and all of it makes me just a little
bit nervous. I keep catching myself worrying
a little bit about what I’m going to be doing – How am I going to feel when I’m
going through it? Am I going to succeed
with everything or will I somehow screw up or fluff my lines? Will I come down with a cold or have crippling
insomnia or… whatever. I used to be an all-out victim of that kind
of worrying, but now that I’m harnessing time, whenever I notice myself going to
those places in the future, I look at my plan for today, I remember what I’m
doing at this moment, and I settle back into where I am right now. And then I remember that for all the times
I’m going to be teaching and traveling and public speaking in the next couple
of months, there will be just as many times, in fact a lot more times, when
I’ll be hanging out and doing nothing, reading a mystery novel, wearing my
sweat pants. I think of how if I’m
projecting myself into the future – having a virtual imaginary experience of
something unpleasant (because whoever worries that it’s all going to be good?)
– I’m missing out on what I have going on that’s nice and peaceful right now. And I come back to the fact that everything
is always fine, nice, okay, whatever it is in the present, and it’s only in the
imaginary, worried-about future that things look really scary.
