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Slow Medicine

December 23, 2011 by bobleckridge

Have you come across the slow movement yet? It started with “slow food”. Slow food, of course, is the opposite of fast food. It’s pretty easy to figure out what a “slow food” movement would be about. Fresh, locally sourced ingredients, individually prepared, and savoured as its eaten. Taking the time to really appreciate each and every mouthful. A bit like “mindful eating” really. 

Next came the “slow city”. The mayor of San Miniato in Italy, with local support declared his town a “slow city”, banning the opening of fast food restaurants and chain stores, encouraging walking, cycling and the nurturing of green public spaces. Several other towns have signed up to these principles creating the “slow city movement”.
There’s a lovely blog named “slow love life“. Read this phrase from its front page….SLOW LOVE means engaging with the world in a considered, compassionate way, appreciating the miraculous beauty of everyday moments, and celebrating the interconnected nature of life”
Then, recently some scientists have called for the formation of a “slow science” movement, posting this manifesto online  and asking for scientists to freed from the perpetual pressures to produce publishable results, to be less outcomes driven, and more exploration driven.
So, how about a “slow medicine” movement? Where doctors, nurses and other health carers take the time to fully understand a person’s illness, and are able to establish therapeutic, compassionate relationships. Where there isn’t a reflex to jump into a “quick fix” by prescribing a drug which will only mask the disease or temporarily modify it. Where it’s a fundamental value to discover what is unique about every individual and to help to stimulate and support every patient’s ability to self heal and self repair. In other words where the focus shifts from short term, outcomes driven goals, to improving quality of life and enabling people to actually develop and grow through the process of being ill.

Acute, fast Medicine
Acute, fast medicine has its place, and that place is at the edge of life. When your illness is sudden and severe I think the advances made in medical technology make a HUGE difference. Quick decisions, and rapid, precise actions bring the ultimate results – the difference between living and dying today.
Acute, fast medicine involves a sharp focus on only what is important to achieve a well defined outcome (not dying for example) in a short period of time (minutes or hours usually).
This model is just not appropriate either for trying to help someone to have a healthy life, or to live a good life in the presence of a chronic disease.
If someone has a condition like diabetes, multiple sclerosis, asthma etc, then using the fast, acute methods to rapidly change a very small part of the whole person is not enough. The timescale of a chronic complaint is weeks, months or even a lifetime. The outcomes which make a difference over that timescale can’t be so easily defined and measured. They are about qualitative rather than quantitative change.
The crucial shift from acute problems to chronic ones involves a broadening of the focus, a deepening of understanding to encompass the whole person inextricably embedded in the multiple contexts of their life.
This takes time, and it takes the establishment and maintenance of a relationship.



Manifesto for Slow Medicine

  • Every person is unique. It takes time to get to know a person. Appointment times should be long enough to discover a person’s uniqueness.
  • Good health care is developed from an understanding of the person who is ill or who wants to stay healthy. Understanding should take place before acting.
  • More than a knowledge of disease is required to deliver good health care. There also needs to be a knowledge of the person. Diagnosis should not be limited to knowledge of disease. It should encompass a knowledge of the person.
  • Doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals  are people too. Every health care worker is unique. Recognising and nurturing this uniqueness is as important as defining knowledge, skills and attitudes required to carry out tasks.
  • Delivering good health care requires self awareness and understanding on the part of the person who is caring. Reflective practice should include working on personal growth.
  • The core of health care is the relationship between individual people – patients and carers. Priority should be given to the relationship.
  • Good health care is relationship based, not event based.
  • Continuity of care should therefore be given priority in order to support and develop healing relationships.
  • Health care is for life. Defined, time-limited outcomes are arbitrary and are not a substitute for life long care.
  • Health carers should work in supportive, understanding environments which enhance the delivery of healing relationships. These environments are co-created by the leaders, managers and health care professionals working in accord with compassionate, person centred values.

Posted in from the consulting room, from the reading room, health | 6 Comments »

Love from the beginning

December 19, 2011 by bobleckridge

Last year I studies Interpersonal Neurobiology with Dan Siegel, whose book, Mindsight, I highly recommend. He teaches around the essential triad of brain, mind and relationships and understanding the links between these three turns out to be tremendously illuminating. On the relationship front, Dan draws on his training in attachment theory and demonstrates the links between early nurturing and personality later in life – particularly in connection with how we form relationships.

Sir Harry Burns, the Chief Medical Officer of Scotland, highlighted in a brilliant presentation earlier this year the key importance of early years in determining future health and health behaviours.

On top of this comes this research from the University of Minnesota demonstrating –

“Your interpersonal experiences with your mother during the first 12 to 18 months of life predict your behavior in romantic relationships 20 years later,” says psychologist Jeffry A. Simpson, the author, with University of Minnesota colleagues W. Andrew Collins and Jessica E. Salvatore. “Before you can remember, before you have language to describe it, and in ways you aren’t aware of, implicit attitudes get encoded into the mind,” about how you’ll be treated or how worthy you are of love and affection.

Wow! during the first 12 to 18 months! How important is love? You can’t over emphasise it.

You might be thinking yikes, if it’s set in the first 18 months, what hope is there? Well, it turns out we can have lots –

The good news: “If you can figure out what those old models are and verbalize them,” and if you get involved with a committed, trustworthy partner, says Simpson, “you may be able to revise your models and calibrate your behavior differently.” Old patterns can be overcome. A betrayed baby can become loyal. An unloved infant can learn to love.

 

Posted in from the consulting room, from the reading room, health, neuroscience, psychology | 3 Comments »

1Q84

December 14, 2011 by bobleckridge

1Q84, the latest novel from the Japanese author, Murakami. In fact, it’s three novels, with the whole trilogy published at the same time, parts one and two in one volume, and the third part in a separate volume. I’d say this is my choice for fiction book of the year. It’s the first novel I’ve read as an ebook and the fact the entire trilogy was on my iPhone and my iPad meant I didn’t need to carry around three large books. I’ll return to that point later.

I loved reading this novel. It has pretty much everything I look for in fiction. Good writing, great storytelling and a book which either makes me think, or somehow changes how I experience the world.

1Q84 is set in Tokyo in 1984 and tells the story of two young people, one of whom is a hired assassin who murders men who abuse women, and the other who is a maths teacher by day, and a writer in his own time. The writer ghost writes a poorly written but fascinating story told by a strange, reclusive 16 year old girl. It becomes a best seller and brings unwelcome attention to highly secretive cult.

Both characters become aware that something isn’t right about the world, the most marked feature being the presence of two moons in the sky. To mark the difference between this world and the world of 1984, they refer to it as 1Q84. It’s this kind of plot turn which is typical of Murakami and which takes you into a border zone between reality and the world of imagination.

The fact that the unusual features of 1Q84 are described in the “novel” written by the 16 year old makes you wonder whether or not all the characters are now living in this novel within the novel you are reading.

This latter theme is probably the key of the whole novel. As well as being a page-turning great read, and a magical love story, 1Q84 really stimulates your thinking about the relationship between imagination and reality, the place of fiction in our lives, and the central importance of story in the creation of the lives we experience. Take a look at this extract –

1Q84

Isn’t that such a great point about stories? They reflect the messiness, the complexity and the uncertainty of reality, and they change us. In so doing, reading fiction does literally change the reality of the worlds we co-create.

I downloaded this trilogy as a Kindle book and fired it up on both my iPad and my iPhone. I don’t know if you’ve used this technology for reading but it’s great. Both of these devices have lovely, bright, clear screens which make text very readable, and as you progress through the book the different devices keep up with you – so when I would open the book on my iPad, it would automatically offer to jump forwards to the place I’d reached when I last read it on my iPhone, and vice versa. That might sound a little clumsy but it’s a seamless and brilliant experience. It meant I could have a quick read in any few spare moments using my phone, and settle down with the iPad to enjoy the larger screen when I had some more significant reading time. I think this was partly responsible for making this such an immersive experience. I could feel I was living in Tokyo at the same time as living in Scotland.

Posted in books, from the reading room | Leave a Comment »

A sea change

December 8, 2011 by bobleckridge

sea path

There’s change underway. Don’t you feel it? The old certainties are crumbling. The global systems are stumbling from crisis to crisis. From “Arab Spring” to “Occupy” there’s spreading unrest. From country to country austerity measures are being imposed by governments without popular democratic support.

Underlying these economic and political stories there are bigger changes flowing. Ian McGilchrist’s excellent “The Master and His Emissary” describes a struggle between two world views – one emerging from a left brain approach to the world, and one from the right. He makes the case that the left brain approach has dominated for the last four hundred years or so creating our industrialised, command and control based societies.

Seth Godin’s superb “We are all Weird” shows how mass consumption, mass production and mass control, the dominant ways of 20th century world, are being replaced by an emphasis on difference, diversity and uniqueness.

Next year is 2012. There are many predictions that this will be a crucial year for humanity.

Let’s embrace it. Let’s embrace change by shifting our focus and our energy on bringing about the changes we want.

Let’s embrace the following “C change” –

  • Consumption to Creativity
  • Credit to Cash
  • Control to Coherence
  • Competition to Co-operation
  • Coldness to Compassion

Consumption to Creativity
When politicians and economists talk about growth, which they claim is an essential characteristic of a healthy society, they mean consumption (or production of goods and services to be consumed). Their emphasis is on figures like GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, the turnover and profit of large companies, which is how much they’ve sold, and how much money they’ve had to spend to produce those sales. But is this growth? Production for consumption? What’s the point of that? Ever greater consumption, at best, is not a sustainable path. At worst, a tipping point will be reached (has been reached?) where the pursuit of greater consumption becomes harmful, divisive and destructive. So, consumption is not a a good target, nor is it an adequate surrogate for growth.
In human beings, greater consumption tends to produce bigger, fatter people. There’s a limit to the amount a person can consume. As the limits are reached waste (and waist size) increases.
Consuming for the sake of consuming doesn’t happen in Nature. Animals consume what they need to be fit and healthy. In the wild, they never become obese. Plants consume in order to grow and develop. Here’s the lesson to be learned from Nature.
If growth is about healthy development, then greater growth should constitute a genuine improvement in life. If it is just about consumption, it becomes a source of degeneration and decline.
So what if we could learn the lessons of the plant world, for example? What if we rated development more highly than consumption? Development, in human terms, is about improving physical fitness, mental resilience, wellbeing, skills, talents and capacities.
There is a common theme underlying these qualities, and that theme is creativity. Creativity produces growth and development. It expands both our abilities and our expressivity – our talents and our self-expression.
What if we prioritised development, improvements in skills, knowledge, performance, as well as expressivity?

This would require a shift away from consumption to creativity.

Credit to Cash.
This current crisis of the global economy, is a crisis of a system based on ever increasing consumption and credit. Once lending slows up, the financial system grinds to a halt. What was the key characteristic of the 2008 crisis? The drying up of credit, or lending, as trust and security fell amongst the banks and financial institutions. Yet, increasingly, finance is based on illusion. Banknotes bear words promising to pay the bearer were originally backed up by gold reserves. If you wanted you could turn these pieces of paper into real gold. But now with derivatives, and computerised, digitised money, the amounts of “money” in the world are no longer related to reality. Country after country is reported as being in debt. Debt they can’t pay off if asked to do so. Who is everyone in debt to? Who is asking to be paid off? And with what? Imaginary money is used to buy ever greater amounts of imaginary money, spiralling up into ever more unstable, unsustainable levels of debt and credit. The total amount of national and personal debt in the world is higher now than ever before in history.
One way to gain greater financial health at a personal or family level, is to move away from imaginary money to real money. In other words, to reduce the amount of credit needed in daily life by moving towards a cash, or bartered economy.
If I do this for you, then you’ll do that for me. Real goods, real materials, real cash. If countries did that too, then the need for credit would diminish.
The less the need for credit the less power and privilege will be held by those who gain from imaginary financial instruments. Those who hold power over whole countries through lending would be disempowered.
What if all the countries which have debt, agreed one day to declare they had no debt? What if they set the counter back to zero? Recalibration Day. Where power shifted back to people and away from the rich minority who hold all the “credit”.

Control to coherence

Industrialisation comes with an emphasis on control. The scientific method of the industrial age has become a way of predicting future states and developing technologies to achieve those states. The wave of industrial development known as Fordism, has produced a whole management ethic around command and control structures. The development of mass production, mass marketing and mass consumption, reduces individuals to units to be controlled and life to outcomes determined and managed by those who hold the power.
Yet, the universe is a vast, complex, unpredictable and uncontrollable place. An individual life is unpredictable and uncontrollable. The crises in the global financial systems, the revolutions and power struggles of the political systems and the ecological stresses manifested in both climate change and the constant appearance of apparently random catastrophic events, from tsunamis to earthquakes, to hurricanes and volcanic eruptions, surely make it crystal clear to us that control is, ultimately, impossible.
What to do? Nobody feels comfortable out of control. Nobody feels safe and secure in rapidly changing, completely unpredictable situations.
We can’t achieve control. But we can achieve coherence. We can actively seek to be more in harmony….with each other, and with the Earth. The greater our actions produce coherence in our interconnected domains of Life, the more we will experience a sustainable, nourishing way of living.

Competition to Co-operation
One aspect of Darwin’s work has been picked up and overblown to an enormous degree – competition. It’s highlighted as the key characteristic for success and survival. Nature is presented as “red in tooth and claw”, one endless struggle pitching every individual organism not only against other species but against all the other members of the same species. Only the best, the fastest, the “fittest” survive.
Of course, there’s something in that view, but that is not all Darwin said, and it’s certainly not all there is to evolution. The other important characteristic is in fact co-operation. It can be argued that it is actually the ability of human beings to interact socially which gives them their dominant place in the evolution of Life on planet Earth. Our social skills include our development of language, and our faculty of imagination which underpins empathy and compassion. It may be that these are the most important human features.
All creatures engage in competition and co-operation but human beings really excel at forming bonds, creating networks, sharing information and resources.
The creation of a economic and financial system based on competition has led us down the path to war and totalitarianism throughout history. Maybe it’s time to up the emphasis on our co-operative powers instead and see what systems we could create from that perspective.
Some may argue that there’s a link between male dominance/competition and female nurturing/co-operation. Could it be that a healthier future lies in shifting the centuries old gender bias of cultures, religions and economic-political systems? Increase the influence of women in all aspects of society.

Coldness to Compassion
One of the greatest problems with reductionism is that if you reduce a human, you no longer have a human. The reduction of human beings to units within a mass dehumanises.
In health care it should be impossible to discover stories of neglect or cruelty. Sadly, that’s far from the case. How can a patient be left unattended, treated as a “case of…..”, uncared for within a health service? Why is poverty tolerated? Why is there famine, rape, torture, human trafficking, terrorism?
A lack of compassion.
With sufficient compassion none of these horrors would be possible.
So there’s my final “C” change – from Coldness to Compassion. A shift of emphasis towards the heart.

Posted in from the living room, life, photography | 15 Comments »

Water as snow and ice

December 7, 2011 by bobleckridge

Ice crop

Iced planter

Snow seat slats

A dusting of snow in Glasgow let me capture these lovely images of snow and ice at work today.

Fascinating. And beautiful. Isn’t the everyday on this Earth amazing?

Posted in from the dark room, photography | 1 Comment »

Optimist or pessimist?

December 6, 2011 by bobleckridge

One of my most favourite magazines in the world is a French language one entitled “Cles“. In the current issue they have a theme about optimism.

I love their exploration of the different ways of understanding the thinking patterns of optimists and pessimists. They quote Winston Churchill, who famously said

“The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity.”

The introductory article says

L’optimiste relativise ses echecs (je ferais mieux la prochaine fois) et generalise ses succes (j’ai vraiment de la chance), alors que le pessimiste generalise ses echecs (je suis decidement un nul) et relativise ses succes (c’etait juste un coup de bol)

Here’s my translation (I’m not an expert!) – The optimist puts his failures/setbacks into perspective – “I will do better next time” and generalises his successes – “I’m really lucky”, whereas the pessimist generalises his failures/setbacks – “I’m really an idiot” and relativises his successes – “It was just a stroke of luck”.

I think one of the interesting things about thought frameworks is how they tend to create the outcomes expected, so we really do find that some people are generally luckier than others. Can you just decide to become more optimistic? I don’t want to over-simplify this, but, yes, I think you can (but then I would, wouldn’t I? I’m an optimist!!).

The issue of “Cles”, explores the “science of optimism” – now there’s a scientific discipline I’d be keen to know more about…..

They suggest the “golden rules” revealed by the science of optimism include the importance of “vigilance” – attentiveness; curiosity; the “capacite a rebondir” – the capacity to bounce back, or to be resilient; and, altruism.

What do you think? What qualities facilitate the tendency to optimism?

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Water visualisation

December 5, 2011 by bobleckridge

Sit down somewhere quiet and get comfortable for a few moments. Relax your body, and become aware of your breathing. After two or three breaths, close your eyes, and remember, or imagine, seeing a blue sky up above you. As far as you can see in any direction there’s a great expanse of blue. Floating across this blue sky are fluffy, white clouds. Look at one of these clouds and watch how it slowly drifts across the blue sky. What shape is the cloud? Does it remind you of anything? As you watch, notice how the cloud is constantly changing shape, so that whatever it reminded you of slowly becomes something else. Pick out a fairly small white cloud from the rest, and, as you watch, see how it gets smaller and thinner. Watch how the edges seem to fade, or melt, into the blue of the sky behind it. As you watch it slowly disappears. Take your time. Watch it slowly disappear.

Look towards the horizon where you can see hills. The clouds thicken and darken over the hills. As the wind blows, the darker, heavier clouds sink down hiding the peaks. You can see misty fingers of rain falling on the hillside.

See the little streams of water, swollen by the falling rain, tumbling down over the rocks, rushing over waterfalls and down valleys towards the land at the foot of the hills.

Follow the stream down till it runs into another stream, both flowing together, creating a wider and ever wider winding river, heading down towards the sea. The river is joined by a third river bringing cold water down from an icy mountain.

Follow this third river back up to its source. Imagine you are flying high above it, following it higher and higher into the mountains until you see the source emerging from a snow-capped peak. Land gently beside the source and feel the snowflakes landing softly on your face. Put out your hand to catch a single snowflake, briefly noticing how this beautiful and unique crystal instantly melts into a sparkling drop of water. Turn your palm towards the stream and watch the drop fall into the icy water. Now trace the path of the stream back down off the mountain, right down to where the river meets the others and all three head down now to the sea shore.

Stand on the shore and look out at a calm sea. The surface glints like glass in the sun which shines high in the blue sky. Puffy, white clouds seem to rise effortlessly over the sea. A wind blows, and the surface ripples and breaks, little waves appearing scattered as far as the eye can see.

Take your time and just stand and watch the waves for a while.

When you are ready, open you eyes and take a moment or two before you get on with the rest of your day.

BE THE FLOW

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The merging of the three rivers

December 4, 2011 by bobleckridge

white water

These three flows – energy, time and consciousness – are like three rivers which run through us, around us, and from which we, temporarily, emerge. What happens when these three rivers flow together?

All the physical phenomena of our existence can be considered as energy focussed in time. The great flows of energy throughout the universe become apparent to us by interacting with our sensory organs so that we see, hear, or feel them, as light, sound, or touch sensations. What we experience as the solidity of the physical world emerges out of the flows of energy and time together. A table might look solid, but it is a lot more space than “substance”. The molecules of which it is constituted are bound tightly together for a time, but the spaces between the molecules are greater than the amount of space occupied by the molecules themselves. In fact, as we have developed the technologies to be able to see deeper and deeper into the substance of things, we’ve discovered that even the atoms which bind together to create the molecules are constantly vibrating condensations of energy in ceaseless movement.

As best we know, the duality of matter and energy is a conceptual one. Matter is a manifestation of energy over a relatively short period of time. If you consider a time period of decades, centuries or millennia, then the solidity of matter disappears.

So, energy flow and time flow together, create the physical reality of the universe. Change the flow of either, and the universe changes.

We really have no way of knowing what would exist without consciousness. However, let’s just bring the stream of consciousness into the merged streams of energy and time. What happens? We get our lived experience of the world.

When we become aware of the flows of energy and time from our own, subjective perspectives, through the stream of our personal consciousness, we potentially gain a full experience of life as we live it.

We even become aware that there is no separateness between ourselves and these flows, but, rather, we are those flows.

Here’s the possibility then – you can develop your awareness of these flows, of these rivers, and, in doing so, you can increase your potential to interact with them. You can learn to shape your own life.

BE THE FLOW

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Be the flow – of consciousness

December 3, 2011 by bobleckridge

colorsplash splash

Consciousness – the awareness of existence.

We can alter our consciousness by changing both the level of our awareness, and the boundaries of our existence. Does that sound strange? Let’s consider each dimension in turn.

Firstly, what are the levels of awareness?

Deep sleep, dreaming sleep, drowsy waking, awake, high alert and awareness of awareness.

In deep sleep, we lose any awareness of our existence. We can’t describe our experience of deep sleep because we have no awareness of being there as it happens. Dreaming sleep is different. It can be difficult to remember our dreams, but with practice and intention our recall can improve. Just before you fall asleep, try repeating to yourself “tonight I will remember my dreams”. Sounds too easy? Actually, it’s easy to repeat this affirmation every night, but not so easy to make it come true. You may have many nights where you repeat this phrase before sleeping before you start to remember more dreams. In addition to this affirmation, it is helpful to keep a notebook beside your bed, and to try to cultivate the habit of writing whatever it was you were dreaming about before you do anything else. I’m sure you will have had the experience of waking up with a sense that you remember last night’s dream, then someone talks to you, or the radio alarm comes on, or some noise distracts you, and, in a flash, your dream has gone.

Different people wake up in different ways. For some people it’s like a switch being flicked on. For others, they need time to “come round”. Waking for them is a slow process. If you are in this latter group, then a daylight alarm might help you raise your conscious level more slowly, and so wake up more effectively each morning.

Awake, is our average level of awareness, but many people who are awake go through the day on some kind of auto-pilot. The truth is that being awake is not the same as being aware.

There is an automatic state of hyper-alertness which occurs naturally in situations of sudden or acute stress. At such times we can become particularly sensitive to the stimuli from our environment – noises, lights, smells etc.

Finally, we have the conscious state of being aware of our awareness. Meditation practice is the best way of developing your ability to be aware of your awareness. In particular, mindfulness meditation is a well developed way to become skilled at this.

From deep sleep, through to awareness, you can think of this as an increasing intensity or strength of consciousness. There’s no doubt that energy flow significantly influences conscious level.

The merging of the rivers of energy and consciousness produce a dynamic experience of awareness. But there’s another dimension to consciousness too. You can think of it as being how wide the river is. We have the experience of personal consciousness which creates our sense of a self. But there are times when we experience such an “in tune” connection with another, that we have a few moments of shared consciousness with them. In fact, when together in a large group, for example, at a concert, or a sports event with other fans, we gain a feeling of group consciousness. In other words, the existence we become aware of expands out beyond our personal existence to a shared existence with others.

How can we expand our consciousness to include more and more of existence, more of what is?

Love is the driving force and the key to this movement. With loving intent, we can connect, we can make the river wider and we can experience our consciousness dissolving its boundaries so we become aware of all that is.

BE THE FLOW

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Be the flow – of TIME

December 1, 2011 by bobleckridge

running time

BE THE FLOW

Take a pencil and draw a straight line. The beginning of the line represents the day you were born. You know that date. The end of the line represents the day you will die. Nobody knows that date. Now put a cross somewhere along the line representing today.

Everything between the day you were born and today is past. It doesn’t exist any more. You can only access it by using your memory (or the memories of others). Everything between today and the day you’ll die is the future. That doesn’t exist yet. You can only access it by using imagination. Some people focus a lot of their attention and energy on the past, maybe going over and over some painful event, some loss or hurt. Although they are alive now, they’re living in the past. Others focus most of their attention and energy on the future, wondering and worrying about all that might be, but which isn’t yet. They are living in some multi-layered world of what ifs.

The present is hard to grasp. The moment you become aware of it, it flies into the past. If you try to prepare yourself for what’s to come, for what lies in the immediate future, then that can rush into the present with such speed that it obliterates it.

There is only really one time you can be fully alive and that’s the present time. Using our memories we pull the past into the present, and using our imaginations we pull the future into the present too. The present is formed from past realities which create the framework of possible futures in the here and now.

The flow of time is like a great river which you can stand in the middle of. Or you can wade upstream into the past and see where the present is coming from. Or you can dive in downstream and imagine what the river may become.

The flow of time is not uniform and consistent however. Can you think of a time when time seemed to drag? Can you think of a different time where, conversely, it flew past? What do you think influenced those different speeds? Are there any particular activities or circumstances for you where time tends to drag, or to fly? What influences the speed of time? What slows it up? And what speeds it up? Is it down to you? Can you influence the speed of time, and if you can, how can you do that?

We us a lot of metaphors of time in our language. Let’s consider some of them to see what effect they have on the flow of time.

 

Passing the time. Do we mean passing in the same way a car overtakes another? Or do we mean transferring it, somehow?

Taking my time. Where are you going to take it? And how are you going to take it? Take my time declares a very personal time. It implies that I am in control of time.

Wasting time. How can time be wasted? We tend to say time has been wasted when we mean that we wish we hadn’t chosen to do exactly what we did choose.

Enough time, or, time enough. These are statements of contentment about time. Either we are able to complete something, or there is a satisfactory amount of time to do what we want to do.

The right time.The wrong time. This implies correct or incorrect actions. For example, it might be a good idea to sit down, but in certain circumstances, sitting down now will cause some problem or some offence. This judgement about right and wrong, like most such judgements, is usually after the event. We judge the present as right or wrong depending on the outcome of the future.

Time stands still. Can you actually experience time standing still? Can you achieve a moment of quiet and stillness through meditation, for example, where the flow of time seems stopped.

Making time. It’s not possible to manufacture time. Time flows by without us having any ability whatsover to see or otherwise  know where it comes from or where it’s going to end up. Yet, intuitively, we have a sense that we can make time stand still, or that someone else can make it stand for us.

Sharing the time. Sharing time is like sharing candle flames. If you and I share some time together, then neither of us has any less time. In fact, when we share time with someone, we can experience a heightened quality of time.

 

As you consider these, and other, metaphors of time, what do you learn about the flow of time?

That it is continuous but that it changes speed.

That you can move around in the flow of time, using memory, attention and imagination, each to varying degrees.

 

BE THE FLOW

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