The Illusion of Time

I've been thinking a lot about time. . . .mostly because I've been creating artificial boundaries of time for that psychological reassurance that I still have time left. . . .because the idea of just living with the ever present unknown feels like too much anxiety to bear. . . .when the threat of the next round with cancer lurks ever present and just around the bend.

The funny thing is that when we ask the question, What time is it? we are really referencing something either in the past or something in the future. Because when we ask about the time, we are really trying to find out how long we have been doing something, how much time we have left doing what we're doing, or how much time we have before we need to be doing something else.

Questions about time are about something in the past or in the future. . . .but never about what actually is.

Time (of course) does not really exist, because "time" is nothing more than a reference point in the now. . . and when we ask the question What time is it? we are really asking the question What time is it now?. . . .so time becomes nothing more than a reference point of where the now fits in to the totality of moments making up both future nows and past nows. But to ask the question What time is it now? without having some question of reference to a past or future event becomes an exercise in random pieces of irrelevant information. . . . .a meaningless factoid. . . a question whose answer becomes, "Who cares?" or "What's the point?"

I want the answer to this question to be more than just an exercise in philosophical existentialism.

Cancer has shaped the way my mind focuses on the illusion of time, which has resulted in me living within micro modules of arbitrarily assigned time. But I have also been able to retrain my mind by asking one simple question: What time is it right now? And once I ask this simple question, only then am I able to let go of my fear about an uncontrollable future and refocus my thoughts on what's happening in the "right now" moment of time where I am alive and well, breathing in and out, with no impending gloom and doom about to pull my life out from underneath me.

So, yeah. . . .I'm living my life in a right now plan.

Grey's Anatomy is such a great source of life truth, and I'm thinking right now about Mark Sloan's "evil" approach to his run for chief of surgery when he stole Mirana Bailey's concept of a "right now" plan (rather than getting caught up in the ten year plan triggered off by the invading cardio god). It's not easy to have a right now plan, but right now it's the only plan that's worthy of my energy and focus, because any other life plan is wrought with too many unknowns and uncontrollable pieces.

And the living of my life with this right now plan is transforming my inner clock into an hourglass. . . .a reality I can live within where that moment that we call "time" becomes nothing more than a stricture point between the unchangeable past and the uncontrollable future. . . .that "right now" moment where past and future has no meaning. . . .no power. . . .that point of time where the right now moment just is what it is. . . .and that is enough. . .