Wellness Wednesday: Take Back Your Time

Recently, I was visiting Olivia's site and found the following link: Take Back Your Time. Even though the site addresses only vacations, it can actually be taken a few steps further.

In US culture, it is a measure of pride to be constantly busy, harried and overworked. That means you are a good produce-and-consume citizen, a good contributor to the Program. It means you are of good character, a "hard worker".

I once mentioned here - and got a nastygram for it - that Hitler was a hard worker. What does that say? It says nothing about character or kindness, nothing about the quality of friendship, nothing about being a good parent or a good partner. It says nothing about being a good world citizen - unless you consider the only worthy activity in the world to be produce-and-consume and building a personal empire.

I lucked out in this life. I am not burdened with a sense of urgency about producing, consuming or getting things done. If I don't get it done today, I'll get it done tomorrow. If not tomorrow, the next day.

The point is that I'll do it. And somehow it always works out okay.

I will always choose lunch with a friend, a good book or engaging in something that brings me joy before I will allow my life to become drudgery.

Turning time into money turns all of us into commodities. It turns us into what Charles Eisenstein calls "survival machines". Each survival machine competes with other survival machines to maximize his or her own benefit. Relationships become economic in terms of loss and gain - what's in it for me - and other people become "you" or "it", something separate from ourselves, something to be conquered or used. We become either boulders rolling down a hill to be avoided or objects to be manipulated.

By slowing down, we are free to savor the things that really matter. Relationships, enjoyment of each other and our environment. As CE says, "We no longer try to resist and control reality, but align ourselves to the indwelling purpose that can only be discovered through relationship. We seek to know people, and not to use them."

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