When Time Feels Constricting
“Time and Tide wait for none”. This is a proverb we are familiar with since our good old childhood days, but it gains new interpretations as we grow up. Time which we always knew was fleeting away now seems even less available to us than before, because there is so much to do and such less time for it. The “it” could be one task which completely consumes us or many demanding attention. What happens in these situations is that time seems to shrink and seems constricting.
When does time feel constricting?
When we grow up to be adults, there is too much pressure on a certain block of time of too many activities. The pressures of the tasks at hand encircle our block of time and narrow it, constrict it. And the effect is such that we feel that time is not free flowing smoothly but rushing so fast through a minute that we feel suffocated. This is when time feels constricted. What does new behavior of time found in adults indicate? It’s a signifier for our adult lives.
Why did it not feel constricting in some age and day?
As kids, we felt it fleeting, but we never found it suffocating. We now have too much tasks. The nature of time changes as the nature of our lives changes and we grow busier by the day and hour and gradually by the minute. And so much so, that we feel seconds, we realize the importance of them and the overwhelming feeling of time is such that it’s almost sublime and we feel it shrinking.
What can this lead feeling of time constricting lead to?
Adults often remark that they feel helpless and worried in the face of this dilemma. Time, they feel, is as if killing them. And they are no longer killing time. This feeling of sheer helplessness makes them get the best of their seconds or renders them depressed and upset.
How to make it work?
Those who get the best out of life understand that they can literally draw something out of each hour of their life. They know that over-indulging in one activity will lead to lack of time for another and this lack of balance is what leads to the constricting nature of time later. It is not the inherent nature of time to be killing us; we kill time, intently and foolishly. So once there is balance there will be an automatic smooth flow of time, because it is similar to the movement of a tide in more than one way.
Threatening and abrupt in one second and for a far off onlooker, a soothing sight as a tide retreats. So is time, one moment we don’t know what to do with it and in another, we could built castles in the air imagining all the stuff we are capable of. Thus, the latter category who get depressed and upset, are doing it wrong. They are over-indulging and moving too slow somewhere, for then the need to arise for time to rush past them.
Thus, whenever time feels constrictive, know it is what you make of it. Overall the concept of time may be here to kill us of course and lead us to our graves, but there are moments, profound moments when time stops, when the tension of time is palpable and so is the joy and love to be found in those very same moments. If time can slow down in such moments, you know its nature is flexible and for most of the time, directly in proportion to your positivity and outlook. So since time is something we have to live through, why not make friends with it and go out on a positive note whereby it does not feel constrictive.
