I just finished reading "The Big Leap" by Gay Hendricks. In what was otherwise a decent book about daring to exceed your own unconscious limitations, there was possibly the worst discussion about time that I've ever read.
I happen to like time. I like it so much, in fact, that when I was in my early 20s, my friend Jack accused me of being in an abnormal relationship with it. I was visiting him at his apartment, which was across the street from the University of Delaware campus and therefore close to all kinds of interesting things to do. But for three days we did nothing but talk about our lives over buttermilk pancakes and, later in the evening, vodka. At no point did Jack go off to school or work. At no point did we leave the apartment to eat something other than pancakes or open a window to inhale something other than our own recycled breath.
During my visit, I repeatedly checked my watch, prompting Jack to ask why I was so "obsessed" with time. I did not, until that moment, think of myself as obsessed by time, except insomuch as I have always been critically aware of it running out, particularly when I am engaged with something as fruitless and soul-bashing as a three-day pancake-and-vodka diet.
According to Hendricks, there are two kinds of time: Newtonian time and Einstein time. Understanding the difference between the two, he says, has the power to change our lives. I will not attempt a full explanation of Newtonian and Einstein time here, because I figure if someone who devoted a third of a book to the concepts couldn't explain it well, I probably can't do any better. But here's the nutshell version: Under the Newtonian paradigm, time is finite. There is only so much of it to go around, and most of us feel that it's never enough. Hence we say things like, I don't have time, time's running out, or time is of the essence. The problem with this Newtonian view is that it forces us to see ourselves as helpless victims to time, instead of what we actually are: the ones who create our lives and our schedule.
Einstein time is so much more brilliant and beautiful a thing that Einstein reportedly apologized to Newton for discovering it. ("Newton, forgive me," he wrote in his memoirs. And really, who among us hasn't wanted to snarkily "apologize" to someone for being more of a physics genius than they are? I know I have.) Once you understand Einstein time, says Hendricks, you automatically become more creative, productive and happy. All that is required is that you embrace this allegedly simple, alleged truth: You are where time comes from.
Believing that you are where time comes from gives you the power to make as much of it as you want, says Hendricks. All you have to understand is something about occupying space in the right way, something about a hot stove and how time seems to expand when you're sitting on it and how it seems to contract when you're in love. If you think this is confusing, you should try reading Hendricks' explanation when you've not been eating pancakes and drinking vodka for three days.
What did make sense to me, however, is this one line in "The Big Leap": "You'll never have enough money to buy all the stuff you don't really need, and you'll never have enough time to do all the things you don't really want to do." In other words, as long as you're out of whack in some area of your life, or not taking ownership of every single aspect of it, you will always feel as if you're behind the curve. You can't get happy (or ahead) trying to achieve the things you don't actually want to achieve, because once you achieve them, you're still unhappy because they aren't what you really want; instead of understanding this, though, we blame time, and say we just haven't had enough time to get to where we are trying to go.
So what's the solution? Stop saying, "There aren't enough hours in the day," or "I don't have time (to work out, to call my mother, to look for another job)." Hendricks calls these statements a "mini-whimper of misery, a claim that time is the whip master and we're its hapless galley slaves, rowing desperately to stay ahead of the lash." They're little lies we tell ourselves, ways we shirk responsibility for our own life, using time as scapegoat. Instead, he suggests we start telling the truth to ourselves. Instead of, "I don't have time," say, "I don't want to " or "It's no fun to" or "It's hard to "
Telling the truth about why we do (and don't do) things is the beginning of owning the decisions we make, says Hendricks. If we do this enough, we'll begin to shift how we fill our time, which will automatically change our perception of it. We'll see that time has always been ours to mold and shape, instead of time molding and shaping us.
This, at least, makes sense to me. But forgive me, Hendricks. I still thought your explanation of time sucked.
Dana Shavin is the author of a memoir, "The Body Tourist." Her website is Danashavin.com, and you can connect with her on Facebook at Dana Shavin Writes. She is also the creator of TheHowl.co, an animal advocacy and lifestyle website for Chattanooga.