Time Without a Watch - thoughts on Flow

IowaGuy

IowaGuy

Hunter-Gatherer
Messages
660
Reaction score
4
Points
0
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]I'm back from another watchless backpacking trip and, with some recent posts dealing with Flow and living in the present moment, I wanted to share an old essay I wrote. Anyone else a fan of time without a watch?[/FONT]​

Time Without a Watch
Iowa Guy​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"Not to keep hours for a lifetime is ... to live forever. You have no idea, unless you have tried it, how endlessly long is a summer's day, that you measure out only by hunger, and bring to an end only when you are drowsy."[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]-Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)[/FONT]​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]In my opinion, not wearing a watch allows one to better live in the present moment. It's an amazing feeling to totally lose track of the man-made concepts of time and schedule, and listen to your body as to when the best time is to eat, sleep, relax, etc. Unfortunately, our efficient-minded society makes it difficult to lose track of time. Clocks are posted in nearly every building and on flashing billboards on many roads. However, despite the difficulty of interacting in modern society without being conscious of time, I recommend entering a time-free zone whenever possible. (This time-free zone has also been referred to as the "zone," "flow," etc. - it's basically being so absorbed in the present moment that one is unaware of the passage of time.)[/FONT]​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Not knowing what time it is for several days is a liberating experience. I have never lived so truly in the present moment as when I'm on a long, watchless backpacking trip with absolutely no concept of time except where the sun is relative to the horizon. It is amazing how slowly yet richly life passes when you're unaware of hours and minutes. When you can suck in every moment and live it for all it's worth, the day seems almost to last forever; to paraphrase John Muir, it's a practical sort of immortality.[/FONT]​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]I sometimes wonder what life must have been like for many Native American societies, who measured the passage of time in terms of moons (full moons, approximately one month in our time). For example, "three moons until the acorn harvest." Somehow I don't think they were preoccupied with the passing of minutes and hours as many people today are, most of them didn't even know how old they were.[/FONT]​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Although it is virtually impossible to ignore time in today's day-to-day business life (short of moving to the Alaskan wilderness); being able to take off the watch, turn off the TV, computer, and cell phone, and live in the present moment is, for me anyway, a great source of everyday happiness. Give it a try the next time you come home from work or on your next journey.[/FONT]​
 
Time is the flow of life, the in the out, the becoming and being. One can find much on "Blackfoot Physics" or "Indian Time"... as odd as it seems, time is merely an afterthought (if that) in some Native American and Siberian languages. One must rely on context to truly understand what the tense is, perhaps even beyond the traditional Chinese tenselessness (which while technically tenseless is always, or nearly always, tensed in context).

When I was a kid and had a lot of Pueblo friends (and spent a lot of time out under the stars in New Mexico), I noticed a subtle difference. In typical Anglo fashion my family and culture attributed it to "Injun Time" (as a cultural slap). I dunno, it seemed that some of the People could literally mean days whan they said day, or months when they said month, or years when they said year. Some of the culturally sensitive groups (Catholic Church or families that have traded for years) say they literally could mean "season" for "month" or "four year period" for "year".

All I can say is that those day-rides that turned magically into week-rides are some of my fondest memories. Whether is was a week with the sheep or cows or two weeks up fishing, I never noticed.

Maybe that is why my creative focus has always been on time (in physics, philosophy, meta-physics and religion). The Navaho "dat'si" (yeas, no, maybe, perhaps, all of the above) I know influenced my conception of truth. So the Hopi term "Likhikwee" (I will look this up in my dictionary at home if you want real reference) can mean a lot of "nows" has influenced my conception of time. It is a Bersonian-Peircean-Whitheadean psychological sense which has many instances (each us carries his own clock).


Pax et amore vincunt omnia.
 
Hi both —

Those moments are to be savoured ... or is that a contradiction?

I live in the now every time I go into my study ... my long-suffering beloved insists that should she brick up the door, days would pass before I'd notice. (Not true! I'd notice as soon as I ran out of chocolate digestive biscuits).

I was thinking about 'living in the now' in a completely different context, as an utterance of 'the soundbite sage'...

The only people I know who live in the moment are those with frankly terrifying neurological conditions that disables their memory ... I'm thinking of the guy who, every time he sees his wife, bursts into tears of relief at seeing her after so many years, even though he saw her just a few seconds ago. Or Dory in Finding Nemo.

Because we bring ourselves to the now, do we not?

And how can we not?

That we do not live quite as we should is, I would say as a Christian, a Fruit of the Fall. That is what Scripture tells us; there we are, before the tree in the (metaphysical) Middle, there we are in Paradise, and what do we do? We reach out of the now for some alternate and imaginary pride-inspired reality.

And to this day we continue to invent every manner of reason to argue that we should have been allowed to have it, even to the point of declaring God a liar ... every excuse possible, founded on the first complain we ever made, and probably the last words this species will utter:
"It's not my fault"

God bless,

Thomas
 
Alas, Thomas, I believe you are correct. Our monkey-mind gets caught up in past and future and we lose the experience, the existential essence of now. That nowness allows the Creativity to flow through and around us, for the Divine to dance with us. And when we mix up the tao that can be said for the one that can be said we miss that (I think we have to, another Fruit of the Fall).
 
I don't wear a time piece but they're everywhere!

Dogen - Uji...
 
Am I the only one that thought of FlowPerson seeing this post? Bless you brother...


I haven't used an alarm clock in years....but do look at the clock when I wake up for a 4 am flight.... if it wasn't for planes....I don't know if I'd need a watch or a calendar...

Before this thread and googling them, I had no clue what a digestive biscuit was...

Members of the rainbow tribes refer to watches as babylometers...a tool required for life in babylon. (outside of the flow)
 
The concept of time does not free one from the constraints of time if the body believes in time. I am not my body, and I am present. My body, however...is not impressed. I am incarnated. Time is a side effect of incarnation. Although I never strayed from the present moment, it did take my body a few minutes to type and post this reply.
 
I like the Hopi context... a lot of words for personal time (then, now, sometime in future), no word for time and "pahanatewa" (literally "white man's sun") for clocktime.
 
IowaGuy said:
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]I'm back from another watchless backpacking trip and, with some recent posts dealing with Flow and living in the present moment, I wanted to share an old essay I wrote. Anyone else a fan of time without a watch?[/FONT]​



Time Without a Watch
Iowa Guy​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"Not to keep hours for a lifetime is ... to live forever. You have no idea, unless you have tried it, how endlessly long is a summer's day, that you measure out only by hunger, and bring to an end only when you are drowsy."[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]-Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)[/FONT]​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]In my opinion, not wearing a watch allows one to better live in the present moment. It's an amazing feeling to totally lose track of the man-made concepts of time and schedule, and listen to your body as to when the best time is to eat, sleep, relax, etc. Unfortunately, our efficient-minded society makes it difficult to lose track of time. Clocks are posted in nearly every building and on flashing billboards on many roads. However, despite the difficulty of interacting in modern society without being conscious of time, I recommend entering a time-free zone whenever possible. (This time-free zone has also been referred to as the "zone," "flow," etc. - it's basically being so absorbed in the present moment that one is unaware of the passage of time.)[/FONT]​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Not knowing what time it is for several days is a liberating experience. I have never lived so truly in the present moment as when I'm on a long, watchless backpacking trip with absolutely no concept of time except where the sun is relative to the horizon. It is amazing how slowly yet richly life passes when you're unaware of hours and minutes. When you can suck in every moment and live it for all it's worth, the day seems almost to last forever; to paraphrase John Muir, it's a practical sort of immortality.[/FONT]​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]I sometimes wonder what life must have been like for many Native American societies, who measured the passage of time in terms of moons (full moons, approximately one month in our time). For example, "three moons until the acorn harvest." Somehow I don't think they were preoccupied with the passing of minutes and hours as many people today are, most of them didn't even know how old they were.[/FONT]​


[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Although it is virtually impossible to ignore time in today's day-to-day business life (short of moving to the Alaskan wilderness); being able to take off the watch, turn off the TV, computer, and cell phone, and live in the present moment is, for me anyway, a great source of everyday happiness. Give it a try the next time you come home from work or on your next journey.[/FONT]​
Click to expand...


The only thing I don't like about not keeping track of time is the implication that we are all old people, without any serious responsibilities.
Ben
 
Ben Masada said:
The only thing I don't like about not keeping track of time is the implication that we are all old people, without any serious responsibilities.
Ben
Click to expand...

Or that we're all young people, with no stereotypes to hold us back in life from reaching our full potential. Why do people ask how old someone else is, if not to try to put them in a "box"?
 
I remember reading about someone attending a wedding in a foriegn country....they went to the appointed place at the appointed time and no one was there. They left and asked friends who were also attending the wedding (of the other nation) and was told it was going to happen at the time told...(which had since past) and that these things take time....they went back an hour later and chairs were being set up...in another hour people started arriving and another hour after that the wedding party got there.....and the party went on and on.... different strokes.
 
Wil - it's funny you mention that story. When I lived in Mexico, I had a similar experience. Mexicans are notoriosly "late" for events. If you tell someone the party starts at 5:00pm, they'll show up at 6:00pm or 6:30pm. Of course, they know that the party doesn't really start at 5:00, as you alluded to.

There was another American foriegn exchange student that I became friends with. We always had to specify with each other whether we were going to meet up at 5:00 "Mexican Time" (meaning 5:30 or 6:00) or 5:00 "American Time" (actually meaning 5:00). If we wanted to meet at 5:00 real time we would actually tell any Mexican friends we were meeting at 4:00, and we would tell each other we are meeting at 5:00 "American Time".

To this day we're still friends and if one of us is late the other will joke that he must be running on "Mexican Time" :)
 
Now let us go to Hopiland, whare there is no concept of time at all. The closest they get is something like "pahana tewah"--literally, "white man's sun". When a Hopi says he will be there tomorrow or an hour from now, don't hold your breath.
 
Time Without a Watch is like the life-story biography of a humble unassuming IHS --- Interstate Highway Sign?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top