I don’t know about you, but I can’t seem to manage time well right now.
I remember those first months of lockdown, after the WHO declared a global pandemic. We scrambled to set up home offices and dining room schoolrooms. We washed our groceries (remember that?), and breathed a sigh of relief when we were told it was airborne but oh wait, now it’s masks and creating pods and waving to neighbors we hardly talked to before as we take our walks to escape the house and its crowd of people/its emptiness.
And I remember how we lost track of time.
Work flows changed so much, and one day was stunningly like the next, and we no longer rely on the TV Guide and network television to tell us what day it is. Hours melted into one another, and days simultaneously flew by and crawled as though we were in slo-mo.
What we didn’t quite understand then was the trauma we were experiencing was causing some of that displacement of time. We knew we were feeling not right (a fifth-century monk named John Cassian coined the term 'acedia’ to describe the effects of separation and drudgery of monastic life, which fit well for the lockdown period too) - but I don’t know that we quite understood at the time the role this collective trauma was having on our sense of time and place. For some of us, it changed us for a very long time, even after the vaccines and the slow return to a life outside our homes.
Something shook us and caused a displacement in our relationship to time.
And just as we were finding our footing, learning how to be safe out in the world, interacting again and feeling a sense of connection…well, on January 20th of this year, we started being intentionally traumatized by what a viral TikTok song calls ‘a hostile government takeover’.
More anxiety. A LOT of displacement. A lot of outright fear. A lot of anger. A call to resist and a fear that not enough is happening or can happen to stop it.
So now our bodies are back in that weird place of not just individual but collective trauma, and that whole effect on our sense of time is back.
And it’s frustrating.
So this is a very long way to say give people a break if they underestimate the time it takes to do a thing, or are running late, or worship runs over, or meetings get moved a few times.
Grace matters more than ever right now. We’re living in an impossible timeline, but here we are, and the only way we are going to get through it is with infinite grace for each other, and solid commitment to meet the moment with our resistance and resolve to not let evil win.
Learning how to deal with chronic stress in a healthy way is something that used to be foreign to me. I knew what stress was, but I more or less dealt with each stressor as it came. The longer term stressors were more challenging, but they still had a term limit. I first experienced chronic stress in the months following 9/11, when I had kids ranging from 3 to 9 years old. For their sake I had to find a way to balance keeping up with the news, and keeping our home life going with as little overt anxiety as possible. Fast forward to more recent years, and it seems like the trajectory of our country is such that a large majority of us - on "both sides" - are feeling CHRONIC stress. How does this affect time for me now? I'm finding that the only way for me to experience time calmly is to be in the present moment. And for me that means NOT reading content from writers who are constantly projecting/predicting the future - this may happen, that may happen, this may happen because such-n-such happened today. Not helpful! Planning for the future is always a good idea, but worrying about it just doesn't get me anywhere. Curiously, I currently experience the most anxiety (time-wise) at the beginning of our Sunday services. I don't care when it ends, but we have more or less constant tech issues, and people are walking back and forth at the front still checking things at 10:30 (our start time). Lately, I have just closed my eyes starting around 10:25...
Yes, this resonates. The energy it takes to question why, to make sense of an onslaught, one that is designed to have that effect, to incapacitate, to delay, to impede action. One activist said that she sustains herself by taking a break when needed, connecting with dear ones who are supportive, then getting back in. A speaker at a UU service in the Hudson Valley had the children try to say tongue twisters as quickly as possible (which is when people mess up), then spike about the need to prepare carefully and slowly so that one can be effective. Sometimes I find myself wanting, needing to hibernate but also finding energy, thriving in connection, with slowing the pace, noticing the sweetness along the way, the birdsong, the yellowing weeping willow, the kind, fun interaction between parent and child, the dog who responds to me on the sidewalk...