Time and Rhythm

I find it interesting that, throughout the world, our species has accepted the idea that 60 seconds equals one minute, 60 minutes equals an hour, 24 hours equals a day, and 365 days add up to a year – except for leap year. And who can forget learning “30 days has September, April, June and November. All the rest have 31 except for February”. I know that it ends differently but I never learned the whole thing. I didn’t care. I just took it for granted. I think we all do that.

Ever wonder who decreed that whole thing? Ever wonder what would happen if we all decided to make up our own time scheme? Alberta sort of does already. I’m surprised that the metric world hasn’t tried to change things since, except for some trades and the United States, the world uses metric measurement. Perhaps it would be somewhat like Esperanto only for time and not language.

And then there’s the concept of speed – fast and slow. And it’s all relative. Is my ‘fast’ your ‘slow’? As a child, I seemed to always be behind my sisters. They walked fast and I didn’t so either I had to almost jog to keep up with them which I hated because I never felt stable or in control of my movements, or they had to stop and wait for me to catch up – something which I was always told was an inconvenience to them [albeit this was usually said without anger but only ‘gentle’ disparagement which still hurt]. It always felt like I was being told that I deliberately walked slowly in order to make their lives difficult – as if I expected the world would march at my speed and wait for me. It wasn’t until I started coaching gymnastics that I understood the concept of slow twitch muscle. I have slow twitch muscle. I walk at the speed which is comfortable for me.

It wasn’t until I was at Decloaking™ in Nova Scotia last fall that I really came to understand about me and speed on a whole different level of thought. For the first time, I knew what had been going on for me all the years of my life. I had spent my life to that point always feeling caught in a dichotomy.

Emotionally, I always felt that I was trying to run and catch up to the rest of my world. I felt that I had to catch up so that I would not be left behind or be out of the group and I really felt that if I didn’t catch up with everyone else, I would miss something that would be important for me to know. If I didn’t move at the speed of the rest of my world, I would get further and further behind and would eventually find myself totally alone.

At the same time that I was feeling this, I have a very quick mind and the ability to assimilate a great deal of information fast and formulate a plan of action from that information. I have always been able to see things in both a linear and horizontal fashion so to speak – to see how new information connects with what I already know and at the same time be able to project how that knowledge might be useful in the future. I have always felt that I have had to slow myself down intellectually and psychically so that the rest of the world could catch up to me. And if I didn’t slow myself down then, again, I would end up alone because I would be so far ahead of others in my world that I would have left them behind. And, if I was ahead of them, what would I be missing that might be important for me to know?

And it was at Decloaking™ last fall that I finally knew that I no longer felt that I was caught in that dichotomy between being ‘slow’ and ‘fast’. I no longer felt that I had to catch up to the world or wait for everyone to catch up to me. And I no longer believed that if I moved fast enough on any plane, I would be able to stay ahead of all that I knew was not working in my life. I no longer felt that I was running away from mySelf. I finally felt that I had found myself. And it was such a wonderful feeling. I was not running anymore.

And then there’s rhythm. I know that going slowly to move fast is how I process things. This has been especially apparent to me lately as I’ve been writing. Things or ideas or information come into my awareness. And they usually seem to go deep inside me to gestate and move and affect my understanding. That is the slow part of the process. Then, when it is time and I am ready to respond, it all surfaces and then I take whatever action I know is right for me. That’s the fast part of the process. I have this vision of a whale diving deeply and gathering nourishment and then sounding so that everything is brought to public view and awareness in the way of my choosing.

This is my natural rhythm of living and being and knowing. And I can hear Louise say that there is no right or wrong or good or bad. This is ME. And I know that!

What about you? Have you ever considered your relationship with time and speed and your rhythm? Might be interesting to know yourSelf rhythmically. Or, as Daddy sang in ‘Sweet Charity’:

To feel the rhythm of life,
To feel the powerful beat,
To feel the tingle in your fingers,
To feel the tingle in your feet.

It definitely makes my life energetic and electric!