Stuck to the Calendar

 

Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you percieve as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. The more you are focused on time, the past and future, the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is. 

Eckhart Tolle 

It is lovely out there today. Today  is the 24th of November, according to this mental construct we call a "calendar", a tool used to help us measure time. Measure time?    How can we measure the coming and going of things  when time is just an idea and all there really is, ever was or ever will be is this "now"? There really is no November 24th anywhere but in our thinking, right?  Today's date  is a product of the Gregorian calendar which was derived from the Julian which was derived from a number of other "time measurements" over the so called years that suited the "minds" at that time.  It isn't "real".  If I asked you to point to November 24th without using a calendar, could you?  You could put your hands up in the air and say, "This...this is November 24th,." to which I would respond..."No...this is simply "now".  November 24th is just an idea, a name, a lable, a concept.  It isn't real. It gets tricky, doesn't it?

Well in this moment, as I look out this window, I see the expected low light through leafless, snow and frost covered branches.  This low light and this semi frozen landscape   is derived from where the earth presently is on its rotation around the sun.  We call this part of this rotating, spinning  process "Autumn"  in my part of the world, "Spring"  in others. That labeling  distinction will depend on another concept...the equator. Spring and Autumn are just words , of course, used to make sense and somehow measure or predict  what nature is doing in response to the earth's axial spinning and rotation around the sun.  The spinning earth "is"...what we see nature doing "is"...the coming and going and change "is" ... but Autumn and the 24th of November " is not."

It is so easy to get lost in concepts about time and to see time as something it isn't.  The focus on the calendar and time in general  can generate a host of different reactions in us:  a clinging to it and a fear that we are running out of it; it can lead us to live according to the calendar over planning and future focus; we  may focus all our energy into doing according to the calender and may forget to "be"; we can become addicted to predicting what teh calendar tells us "should be" that we fail to accept "what is". 

Don't get me wrong. The calendar is a very useful tool. It was meant to help us to predict and prepare for these changing seasons so we could survive with a little less struggle.  When I look at the calendar page and see November 24th I know "Winter" is coming...I can prepare my house, my cupboards, my yard for the upcoming weather.  I can also see that I have an appointment today or two days from now that I don't want to miss. How would we ever organize  an appointment...a future meeting between more than one individual ... without a calendar? It is useful.

What I wanted to get at was our reliance on it can sometimes be problematic taking us from the only time there really ever is...right here, right now.

Something to think about.

All is well!