Timing Is Everything … no comments
I’ve been spending a lot of time over the past few weeks rushing. Rushing to meet someone for dinner. Rushing to meet someone for breakfast. Rushing to be on time for a luncheon. Rushing to make sure I make it to a matinee performance.
I don’t spend very much of my life being on time for anything. Not on purpose, anyway. I have never worn a watch and even when I was a kid I was very aware of being in the moment and being where I supposed to be when I was supposed to be without much effort. It is always that way when I travel too. I move through my days without a concern for the time and everything falls into place, like clockwork.
But when I have to be somewhere on time … Now that’s a pressure I do not like. It’s so stressful. I can feel it in my heart, constricting like a hand squeezing my internal self. I don’t know if it comes from being trained in school to be in class when the bell rings, or from the few times where shear minutes of the clock ticking have cost me a job. But the idea of being on time is counter-intuitive. It goes against nature and the natural rhythm and order of things.
I live in a metropolitan area where, when taking public transportation, it is highly possible, and probable, to arrive an hour early or a half hour late, but rarely on time, and never knowing which until the arrival. I have heard more than one person describe their commutes as ‘giving it up – to the force, to God, to the Universe, to Whomever’ because once the train or bus door closes the rest of the commute is out of anyone’s control. It just happens, or doesn’t.
So it has been over the last few weeks. It’s been a practice of letting go and letting things happen, in an opposite way from that which I’m used to doing. Fortunately everyone who lives here will accept the BART, MUNI, train, bus excuse for being late. It’s just a given. And fortunately I haven’t had to use it, not once, in the last two weeks of running around.