Time is NOT running out.
How an ancient calender can bring a new perspective
You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.
JM Barrie
There is a story about a lawyer who dies prematurely and finds himself at the gates of heaven aged only 47. Never shy of an argument he remonstrates with St Peter. “Why am I here? I am a good man. I do lots of pro bono work and am a member of Rotary. I run five miles a day and eat green vegetables. Why did I not get my three score years and ten?”
St Peter strokes his beard and looks puzzled. “Well, we did give you credit for your good works, and your healthy lifestyle. But according to the number of billable hours you recorded on your timesheets, we get you to be 83.”
Many first careers encourage a rather screwy relationship with time. We declare it as valuable, equal to money. It is frequently described as limited, suggesting a preciousness that comes from scarcity. Wasting time is deprecated implying it is something to be treasured. Yet, we become so focused on productivity that the hours and days slip by without us ever actually being present for them.
One of the first things I was taught as a young lawyer was the six-minute billing unit. A piece of dictation that took seven minutes counted as two units. A phone call that took four minutes also counted as one unit. Therefore you can have three six-minute units in any given twelve-minute period of time. Time was something to be, multiplied and maximised. The emphasis was on the (perceived) accumulation of it.
As a Judge, we were forced to list eight or nine hours worth of work in a five-hour slot. Then emergency cases were added on top. Time was to be managed and manipulated. There was never enough of it.
All this embedded a perpetual franticness within my veins that drove me, pumping adrenaline around my body and telling my brain that I needed to do more. More. More. MORE! When the legal job ended the drive continued and I tried to bring it to the studio where I found that attitude to be utterly unhelpful.
Creativity requires pondering, contemplating, thinking, wondering, daydreaming, trying and doing over, doodling, and imagining. Establishing a second-half of life vocation based on creation is fundamentally not about the production of products but about making a life that is full of joy, growth, and wisdom. It is about purpose, legacy and impact.
These things are not pressed out on an assembly line like thistle-stamped pieces of shortbread thumping off the belt into a tin. They grow imperceptibly like berries on a bush, wild and independent. It was hard to adjust and to let go of the sense that I was being lazy, unproductive, feckless.
When I struggle with intangible concepts like this I often turn to the Hebrew language for a new angle from which to view the problem. Each word has a three-letter root and looking at the words with common roots can help me access a new perspective.
One word for time, zman shares its root with hazmana meaning ‘invitation’, with zminut meaning ‘availability’ and also with lezamen, best translated as ‘to convene’. Another word for time, hove, signifies the present tense, the here and now. It shares its roots with the noun hithavut or ‘inception’ and with lehitavot, ‘to be created’. Through this lens we may see time as an invitation to gather together with our muse, to make ourselves available to what might spring to life if we stay here, fully present to the moment of inception.
Time from this perspective becomes less something to be grabbed from the river bank as its rushes past us and something to wade into. Something we can stand still and firm in the flow of.
This is not to say that a creative life is incompatible with goal setting. The Hebrew word mo’ed meaning ‘appointed time’ shares its root with mu’ad meaning ‘to be appointed for’ and ya’ad meaning ‘destination or aim’. We can set ourselves towards a direction but we do not need to rush or strive to get there. It will happen in its appointed time. If we stand present, mindful of the here and now we don’t need to move, time will move, with us always in the present until it carries us to the appointed hour and the achievements for which we have been appointed or made destined. Or, if that wording smacks too much of predestination for your comfort, consider that time, if lived by taking small actions in the present, will move us towards the results which we ourselves have appointed as meaningful, the achievements we personally destine as our future. ( Happily, this is not even all about work. Mo’ed is also the word for a holiday which includes the concept of Shabbat the weekly day off.)
Is it just an unachievable ideal to live by this concept of a slow, present-mindedness given that we must function in a world of relentless rush and pressure? A world where galleries have opening hours and publishers deadlines and the people around us place constant demands on us? I don’t think it requires us to remove ourselves from the world (though the occasional retreat can help reset our rhythms and remind us deep in our bones what the experience of present living is like). Rather we can choose to overlay this creative approach to time over that of the commercial approach to time as if we were wearing tinted sunglasses to tame the harshness of the sun.
I have chosen, for example, to release this Substack twice a month. Marketing gurus tell me once a week is better. One I read - the one that gave me hives and required me to lie down with a cold compress - suggested posting online up to seven times day! Maybe if you are pressuring people to buy a product that’s necessary. Who knows? That is not my area of expertise. What I do know is that what I am doing here is encouraging contemplation. I require reflection time to get to the material I hope is worth reading. You will require time to allow it to soak in from brain to soul to action.
So fortnightly it is. Once on the first of the month, in a nod to the organisation of the world in which I live. Then once on the new moon in a nod to the ancient festival of Rosh Chodesh and a calendar which moves awkwardly on a cycle of moon days, each day 48 minutes shorter than the time it takes the earth to rotate the sun.
On this counting, each day starts at a varying point all of which are when the Gregorian calendar and our Apple watches tell us it’s still evening. It’s a calendar that encourages us to look outside ourselves, past the obvious, beyond the tick of clocks invented in the industrial revolution to aid production. It invites us to take a moment to walk outside and to look deep into the sky, patiently waiting to see if the first stars that herald a new day are visible. Laying it over my Google calendar reminds me that my second half-creative vocation is not a clockwork automated system but a natural process of shifting and repositioning, a movement towards, a contrast to the usual. It teaches me, as I approach the end of the modern-day with to-do list items incomplete that that time to achieve is not running out. Rather it constantly renews itself and with it our energies if only we stop striving and expect of ourselves only what truly fits into the present moment. If we understand that the moments of star gazing are not wasted time but the place to start our days.
For you to ponder:
What words do you tend to use to describe time? What difference would it make to your life if you change those words?
Is there a way of marking time that you can adopt from an old tradition? Or is there a new one you can invent that you can lay over the Gregorian calendar and the nine-to-five culture? As you consider that, what internal needs do you find you are seeking to meet with your new system?
From the studio:
Kadosh: Chol 1,2,3 and 4 Acrylic and oil pastel. 12 x 12 inches.
£195 each, free postage in UK
Sacred: Ordinary.
This series is about me carving out a separation between different usages of time, to clear space in my head and my life. Underneath the surface are many layers that took time to lay down and which bring texture and a sense of mystery to the work. You can see more art here.
Finally… a blessing
May the heat of the sun give you the energy to manifest your purpose in the world. May the coolness of the moon grant you the wisdom to discern that purpose. May the moments of slippage from day to night and night to day bring you space to accept yourself just as you are right now.
Shalom.
I agree with quite a number of your comments, especially the pressure during our working lives to cram as much as possible into the limited time available. Having had my 'second half', and perhaps now enjoying my third, I do have a sense of 'times winged chariot' drawing near. There are many things to learn, but with art it is not just the learning of techniques etc, it's the experience and experimentation, and that takes time to marinate. I take inspiration from artists such as Francoise Gilot (who recently died at around a hundred), and Francoise Sullivan an artist from Montreal, still working at around the one hundred mark. And every year I continue to tell myself I have another twenty years.
This is a lovely reflection and an invitation to review how we view time. Artists need time reflect and ponder and percolate new ideas, none of which looks “productive” but all of it quiet essential. We need to put down the striving energy of our past careers so we can be more present to the voice of inspiration in the here and now. I’m looking forward to your next newsletter!