Open Questions on Time

The other day I found myself saying to someone, “Time is a convenient scapegoat.”

What I meant by that is this: We treat time badly. We make it scarce. We blame the lack of it for our inability to be who we want to be. How many times have I said or thought, “I wish I could do XXX, but I just can’t find the time”?

Sometimes when I am waxing philosophical (mostly internally), I ponder time. What is time? Most of us can agree that to some extent it is a human construct, but intuitively it seems based on something. I usually come back to the same conclusion: it seems to be based on our experience of change. Time moving forward correlates to change occurring.

But but but! From a cosmic perspective, is not change the same thing as creativity? Change is the infinitely expanding universe, and creativity is the infinite expansion of the universe, no? Some differentiate between clock time and deep time. This notion of time=change=creativity would correlate with deep time. That is, it doesn’t help us schedule appointments, which is clock time.

So when I say “Time is a convenient scapegoat”, which type of time does that refer to? Surely not deep time. It’s clock time, when I look at my calendar and start to create a lot of stories about how I don’t have any time.

What is happening within me, in that moment when I become accountable to clock time rather than deep time?

What would happen if I made time my companion or collaborator rather than my scapegoat? What would need to shift for that to happen?