Our society has a problem with time. On Mondays, we crawl out of bed and trudge to work or school, where there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done. Tuesday, we’re googling “life hacks” in the interest of saving time or making life “easier.” Wednesday, we’ve affectionately named “hump day,” suggesting that the entire first half of our week was just an uphill battle to get past. Thursday, we spend dreaming of Friday, when we’ll loudly proclaim “TGIF!” Saturday and Sunday are our two days of bliss, when we allow time to progress at its normal speed, even wishing for it to go slower.
Within that cycle, we find more ways to play around with time.
I work with a guy who has no problem doing 10, 11, 12 hour shifts at a store where everyone’s scheduled for 8 hours at the most. He works two jobs, making the extra-long shifts at each job the easiest, but certainly most mind-numbing way to go about balancing the two. The other day, I asked him how he gets through his now-notoriously long shifts. His answer? “I just take a deep breath and remember that in the grand scheme of things, it’ll be over in a minute.”
This is sage advice for tough times. When life feels unbearable, it is crucial to retain perspective and remember that most trials and tribulations are only temporary. The problem comes when we start applying this logic to everyday things like work. I even find myself rationalizing and calculating in my head, attempting to trick myself into making my days shorter.
“Okay, don’t look at the clock for thirty minutes. When this hour is over, your shift is halfway over. That’s only two hours until you can take your next break! But if you push your break back further, then you have less time left when you come back! Okay, let’s just not look at the clock at all.”
This is my daily monologue. I play constant time games with myself during tedious or boring tasks. Entire days of my life are chunked away this way, filed into categories of “days to speed through” and “days I wish would slow down.”
In my theatre days, one of the biggest goals to aim for was to be “in the moment.” This means that the actor has completely dissolved into the character, no longer concerned in their head about what the audience is thinking, what their next line is, or the stage makeup on the other actor’s forehead. It is these fleeting times of being “in the moment” that an actor craves and strives for. It could very well be argued that the best actors are the ones that are able to stay in the moment the longest.
Along the same line, can we not say that people who live the best lives are the ones who live in the moment the longest? The people who take themselves off autopilot, have no regard for watches, and are not content with “TGIF,” preferring to be thankful no matter what day it is? Ones who don’t have to ration their time or watch the clock until the time they allow themselves to start living again. Regardless of whether we like or don’t like our jobs, woke up sick or healthy, got caught at every red light or sped 10 miles over the speed limit the whole way through our commute, each day is a day we only get to experience once. Rather than chip away at them, we should embrace them and dive in, living in the moment until someone finally brings us our Life Oscar for “Most Fulfilling Life/Life Most Likely to Be Turned into A Screenplay/Life We Wish We Had.”* Anyone who can smile their way through bumper-to-bumper traffic in 90 degree heat or avoid the clock during a brutally slow eight hours behind a cash register deserves an award.
*At time of press, this was not an actual award.
