Breathe Magazine

Tick, tock. Time is a constant presence, yet elusive. One minute you’re chasing it, the days, weeks and months flying by. The next you’re clock-watching, each hour stretching out interminably before you. Lives are measured against its passing – how much you can pack in, running late, going with the flow, making it with seconds to spare. And yet not everyone’s relationship with the clock is the same. Some eat lunch every day at noon, others take their cues from internal sensors, waiting until they’re hungry. Do you get up at 7am, leave work at 5pm and sleep at 11pm, or rise when you wake, work until you’re finished and go to bed when you’re tired?
Your answer affects more than your to-do list. How your time passes is connected to how you experience life. If you like to begin when it feels right, being forced to start earlier can leave you out of sorts, as though you’re out of sync with the world. While if you prefer to stick to a timetable, removing that structure can make you feel jumpy, restless, unable to settle. When the hours are slipping through your fingers, days rolling into one, worries about time not being well spent can abound. As the world turns on its axis and another year shifts into view, thoughts inevitably turn to what could be achieved in the months ahead, and it’s easy to get swept along in the push to progress, or squeeze more in.
But sometimes time has other ideas for how you should spend it – circumstances change, responsibilities take over – and perhaps that’s all well and good. It might reveal that it isn’t always necessary to be in motion. Time ‘wasted’ on routine pursuits – reading books, watching TV, journalling – could now seem a cherished space for reflection. It’s freeing to realise you can stop searching for a future moment when you’ll have time to do what you want to do. Because the perfect time is right now.