Your relation to time

I'm curious of hearing about your relation to time.

In all senses :

Do you accept time? Do you accept to wait? On the contrary, are you impatient?

How do you feel about aging?

Do you feel dominated by time or the contrary?

Do you feel that your past influences your present?

Do you make projects for the future?

Do you live in the present?

Do you procrastinate? Do you arrive late at meetings, or early? Do you organise your time?

Whatever comment about your own relation to time is interesting.

I ask those questions because i saw it often talked about here, but didn't see it discussed as a topic.


(trying to understand the world )

I'm a taxi driver. I can drive a hundred miles to a pick up and arrive within 30 seconds of the pick up time. I'm invariably late for meetings though. Other people's time seems to be my money. There are never enough hours in a day or years in my life. Much that life is a drag; I want to live forever! I dread getting old.

http://youtu.be/D_ubwE3IJhY

I'm generally quite impatient and am not comfortable waiting for things or waiting for people to do things for me. When I say "do this" I really mean "do it now" and get irritated if it's not done immediately. It feels like I'm being challenged.

Time has partially eroded my grandiose fantasies. I still have them but as I grow older I also grow increasingly aware of the incongruence and absurdity of them.

Philonoe wrote:Do you live in the present?

Most of your questions seem too open ended to be significant. They would require context for the answer to distinguish itself from how nons might answer (i.e., there could be a few, seemingly contradictory answers depending on context).

I think the quoted question gets to the heart of the matter. I lived with a very ill-defined concept of time (just like my undefined sense of boundaries: I extend to fill the world, everyone exists as a cast member of my world, etc.). I tend(ed) to live in a "smear" of time. The past, present and future. The present was only as interesting as the past/future I could relate it to.

The difference between now and 2-3 years ago (when I had no clue how I live too much in the past/future) is significant. I was a time-traveler by comparison. That led me to have contradictory responses to things occurring in the "now." (I might enjoy an aggressive deadline if it fit my Confabulated self. Or, feel offended at a deadline. It depended upon how time "works for me." I am the master of the universe. If one of my creations is being used against me....).

Lately time feels more like the skydiving photographer who jumped without his chute. He lived in his viewfinder. He followed a student/instructor tandem jump out the door, filming them until they pulled their ripcord -- and he reached for his.

That's what self-awareness feels like in terms of distinguishing past, present and future (not an ephemeral smear I travel through to suit my purposes). Maybe others can't relate to that. But, I can. I have a very distinct feeling of

• The past being the increasingly distant-plane, something I will never get back to. Something I didn't live completely in when I was in it (viewing my experience inside the plane through my inner viewfinder, my inner narrative.).
  
• The future looks stark and bleak by comparison to the Confabulated version which I glibly maintained/revised. This is my wishful thinking, the general tenor of expectations without responsibility for making them reality. The persistent mindset "someone's coming for me." SpartanLifeCoach calls it the Oprah Winfrey Reality Tunnel (warning: he has a propensity to foul language.).
  
• The present. I can imagine what went through the photographer's mind. The conflicting emotions of beating himself up for his mistake. A desire to look back into the viewfinder (because it the ending was always different). The harsh reality of the plane above, the approaching ground beneath.

I feel fortunate that I have more time to assess those emotions and reconcile myself (to myself). He simply suffered from "muscle memory." It may not have been hard for him to sort through his priorities, reconciling himself to what happened. For me, I have a structural problem which contributes to me smearing the past/present/future together in a maladaptive way. So, it's harder to sort out and find more realistic priorities. It involves a lot of visiting the past in order to distinguish it from the present/future.

Philonoe wrote:I'm curious of hearing about your relation to time.

In all senses :

Do you accept time? Do you accept to wait? On the contrary, are you impatient?

What do you mean by accepting time? I often feel as though I don't have enough time to squeeze everything I want to do into one day, but at the same time, I often get bored and think time is going too slowly.

How do you feel about aging?

I dread aging. There is nothing about the typical middle aged lifestyle that is appealing to me.

Do you feel dominated by time or the contrary?

Sometimes, as I frequently don't think I have enough of it in my day.

Do you feel that your past influences your present?

Maybe in ways I'm unaware of...I don't know.

Do you make projects for the future?

Sometimes.

Do you live in the present?

Yes.

Do you procrastinate? Do you arrive late at meetings, or early? Do you organise your time?

Sort of...I put off things that are more important for things that are more entertaining. I organize my time when I have a lot to do, but I don't really plan out or organize free time.

Do you accept time? Do you accept to wait? On the contrary, are you impatient?

I can and do wait, but absolutely hate it. I'm very impatient. I want what I want when I want it. But I've gotten better at pretending I don't mind waiting.

How do you feel about aging?

Honestly? I hate it. Yeah, there's the "wisdom of age" and all that, but I can't think of anything else good about it. I hate watching your looks go, and it gets harder and harder to find good jobs, new lovers, or new opportunities. Our culture worships youth far too much, but aging still sucks.

Do you feel dominated by time or the contrary?

I resent it. I resent the way it intrudes on what I'd rather be doing and forces me to spend most of my time working, and I hate how much faster time flies by the older you get.

Do you feel that your past influences your present?

Very much so. I'm haunted by demons from my past and old behavior patterns set as a very young child.

Do you make projects for the future?

No, not really.

Do you live in the present?

Pretty much, but I do dwell on worries about the future and regret over the past. I allow those things to interfere with the present.

Do you procrastinate? Do you arrive late at meetings, or early? Do you organise your time?

I'm pretty punctual, but when it comes to getting started on things I need or want to do, I'm a terrible procrastinator. It's gotten better, but it's still a problem.

are you impatient?

yes. I'm very, very impatient.

How do you feel about aging?

I don't feel it.

Do you feel dominated by time or the contrary?

I treat time like a chewing gum.

Do you feel that your past influences your present?

no

Do you make projects for the future?

thousands of projects! but I rarely stick to these plans

Do you live in the present?

uhumm

Do you procrastinate?

always

Do you arrive late at meetings, or early?

usually, I don't arrive at all.

Do you organise your time?

no

Hi,

I ressurect this thread because it seems to me that it could be interesting to talk more.

There was a question : "what do you mean by accepting time?" I don't know. It seems to me that the way people relate to time is very personal and very present in people.

Some people arrive always late. Some people are - sort of - dominated by time : extremely organised or - on the countrary, victim of own disorganisation.

Personally it seems to me that my relation to time is much related to my own psychic state. For instance in moments where i have low self esteem it seems to me that time goes to fast, that i would be unable to accomplish something. Time becomes big human eater.
At some moments i arrive always late - i don't know why.

Is there a link between own narcissism and relation to time? Is own narcissism refusing time, as a constraint?

This is not about "narcissists" - more about own narcissism - in everyone - and its relation to time.


(sorry if this is not very clear or if there are mistakes i english)


Any thoughts?