Time, The Parent of Presence

How to take moments not as tokens to be exchanged for later achievement but as and for themselves.

Hi,

How are you this week? What did time enable in you?

Cloud Study (ca. 1821) by John Constable (English, 1776-1837)

Spring is happening. Even despite the occasional temperature drops here in Poland that hover menacingly around 0 Celsius degrees, it is happening.

The buds packed full of new life, the first flowers, the mating dance of the peacock and roosters, the galloping of the horse on the still-shy but so-hopeful grass, and the curious baby goats which I hold up to my face so they can sniff my eyes and hair, and nibble on my nose.

I’ve been in bed with a cold this whole week, and thus unable to witness all the happening. Such a waste. I looked through the window and almost wanted to scream to the spring to wait for me, and halt the blooming of wildflowers until I could see them up close. But that would be foolish. I am not important at all in this process.

The privilege of bearing witness, and admiring, is all I can ask for, and this generosity is more than I could ever repay (a part of which I try to do in writing this, not talking about the flower, and the grass blade, and the earth awakening from slumber, but on their behalf, to the best of my ability).

Luck is not an absolute thing. While it withdrew itself from other areas of my life, yesterday, it blessed me with a somewhat stronger condition, and so I could resist it no more: I put on a jacket and shoes and went to the forest, even if just for a brief visit. I had to place my hands in a stream to make sense of things again.

The forest is now carpeted with fields of flowers, white and yellow, immersed in the loud and fresh, newly-born greenery of leaves. My small dog cut through them, running in circles, amazed by what she, too, is enabled to witness. I stood still, listening to the forest, and guided by it, slowly, slowly hearing myself again. My head has been overflowing these days. It was necessary to air it out.

When I sensed the inside of my being steadying at last, and the smell of waking soil taking me back home, I walked up to the warm body of an oak basking in the sun and pressed my cheek to its rugged and deeply furrowed bark. I listened to its woody murmur as both of our bodies were rocked by the wind orchestrating from above. It felt mysterious and intimate. For a moment, I wondered if I was not eavesdropping on the secret dialogue an oak was conducting with the world. I didn’t need to understand its language to know it was saying something important. With respect to its privacy, I stepped back and went deeper into the forest.

This is all I know. Putting on shoes, or not wearing any at all if it’s summer, walking out of whatever door that homes me and into the woods, pressing my palms to the wet soil, the cheek to the patient tree. And if I’m near a body of water, I would inevitably come to it as well. This has always been my way. Out of one home. Back into another, independent of location and circumstances. Inward. It is from the tree that I learned if one stands still, and roots deep, one will understand resistance and steadfast, trustful growth. The thin, quick creek showed me that even if, at times, there seems to be almost no ‘you’ at all, it doesn’t threaten your existence — it is just the form and the path that are put to work, and question.

Nature doesn't perceive time the way we humans have constructed it. Growth and death happen right now, in this moment. And although there has been instances of animals such as elephants grieving their kin, or ants caring for the injured, they don’t do it against time but with it.

For a while now, my life has felt as if it, itself, tried catching the last hours, and days of sleep before spring calls it out, too, as it does with all that it penetrates and actuates. Even though I could still feel the outline of the path as my feet hovered above it, my body carried through time thick as the morning mist and uncertain, was disconnected from my core. I was living the winter of my own.

I suppose a part of me which still hasn’t unlearned to seek stories and which finds comfort in the narrative of thoughts has grown too fond of them again and hungry, and attempted to swallow me. In other words: I forgot to be present.

It is necessary to get lost at times. It is okay to return to spaces which we thought were left behind. How else could we be found in those we’d never dare to dream of?

The longing for stability, for predictability. Even if their illusory nature is well known, still, there is a yearning to rely on it. Cautious attempts to grow attached to plans and dreams, in secret, because deep-rooted habits take long to weed out. And the ego, trying to reclaim its ruling. The arduous task of simplification, emptying the container of being.

I realise I have treated time as my commodity once again. As something taken, and not a gift.

And with it, I made my life a target and victim of it, a tool rather than a celebration. I forgot to breathe deeply, and attentively.

I forgot it is not about me at all, this life. That I am but an evanescent creature. Like a pine cone, formed to life to fall apart, piece by piece, leaving behind quality seeds. I forgot that the time enables me, not the other way around.

I could see it yesterday, sitting to write this letter, struggling to wade through the feverish fog that overtook my mind; this confusion works through me. I sat empty-handed at my desk and thought, what can I write about? How can I write when words come just briefly, and disperse like butterflies when I reach towards them? But then, this morning, after my daily sitting meditation, I got up from the cushion with a new, much more useful thought: What can be offered? What is it that might serve you, my reader?

It is not about me at all. And the time is not against me, I just tried fighting it instead of letting it carry me gently and attentively, as it does if I only offer the same qualities to the world, and myself.

“Maybe ‘the point’ isn’t to live more, in the literal sense of a longer or more productive life, but rather, to be more alive in any given moment—a movement outward and across, rather than shooting forward on a narrow, lonely track.”
— Jenny Odell

Living courageusly and plentifully, spreading our small beings across the vast thickening time with joy and generosity, offering ourselves to the world and taking the world in as it gifts itself to us in any given moment. Could it be a measure of life well-lived? Perhaps, as Shyalpa Tenzin Rinpoche says:

“Do not measure yourself by how affluent, successful or influential you are. Measure yourself by how content you are, by how present you can be in each moment. (…) Within the unconditional appreciation of our breath, we will find unconditional love for all beings. When we realise how precious our own breath is, we will not think of hurting anyone, not even a tiny ant running across our table. (…) This is the only worthy achievement in this fleeting life: to be a kind and caring being.”

Time enables us to be present. It offers itself as a carrier of life so we don’t forget its preciousness, and remain attentive.

I agree with John O’Donohue when he says that there are two time zones in us — the surface, rapid, over-structured time, and the deep and steady time, which we can access if we consciously slow down. Then it’s like “the surface of the ocean, all restless, and then you slip down deep below the surface, where it’s still and where things move slower.”

We can choose to slow down, to make more space for stillness and wonder, but we can also reframe the way we perceive time. What would it be like to see it as a friend, an enabler, facilitator rather than an enemy or bully that we’re captive to?

This is what I’m relearning to do, over and over. To “take time not as calendar product but as the parent or mother of presence.”

Approached this way, time behaves differently, and the life that’s interwoven with it gets permission to act through us naturally and unobstructedly, as it needs to do.

“To be contemplative is to learn to trust deep time and to learn how to rest there and not be wrapped up in chronological time. Because what you’ve learned, especially by my age, is that all of it passes away. The things that you’re so impassioned about when you’re 22 or 42 don’t even mean anything anymore, and yet you get so angry about it or so invested in it. So, this word ‘contemplation’ — it’s a different form of consciousness. It’s a different form of time.” says Father Richard Rohr in the interview with Krista Tippett for On Being

As a child, I’ve been contemplative, and I’d inhabit that kind of time, running deeply underground in my existence.

But growing up, I also grew scared that walking slowly I won’t arrive, and I’d forget that it’s about arriving with every step and not about me, or my feet, or the destination at all. And then it happens what had happened now: I float up, to the surface of time, and get temporarily lost in its rapidness and chopped-up fast food moments.

However, I’ve learned to listen to life, or rather: it made me obedient. It showed me that when it calls me to slow down, it is to dive deeper, and to inhabit the spaces that I’d denied myself for too long.

Step by step, I am learning to befriend both time zones of my existence, and to travel between them smoothly. Perhaps, at some point, I will be able to merge them, and there wouldn’t be any friction anymore, and the time would keep birthing my presence wherever I am, whatever I do, whoever I am with.

“Take time not as calendar product but as actually the parent or mother of presence.”
— John O’Donohue

What does announce the arrival of spring louder and more poignantly than baby goats coming to share this world with us?

P.S. The subtitle of this letter is inspired by the interview with Mary Oliver, conducted by Stephanie Burt for The New York Times.

Question to you, dear reader:

How do you befriend your time?

With much love,

Justyna