My father taught me to be on time. He never taught me to be early. He told me never to be late. I remember being a child walking along with him to an above ground subway in Astoria when he said this to me pointing to his gold watch. My mother was always late. I take after my mother. I was born late. I arrive almost everywhere late. I strive to be on time, but some days, it just doesn't happen.
My mother always has been obsessed with clocks and watches (and mirrors and technology, but that's beside the point). When I was a teenager, I asked her to stop giving me watches every Christmas. When I was in my twenties, I had to remind her about the watches and clocks. I never did like them.
I remember sitting in a team building exercise at a former job many years ago. Collectively, everyone in my small group (broken up by our Myers Briggs results) did not wear a watch. I looked at the wrists of those around the table when I noticed. No one liked them either in my group! We later realized this was a common thread for our small Myers Briggs personality type. Time irked us.
Recently, I purchased a book I was drawn to - Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now. As someone who practices and teaches meditation, I am very used to the concept of being in the "now." However, I was fascinated with his thoughts on this. Tolle says that we live only in the past and future. Our past says who we are. Our future is where we put our happiness. Like when I get a new job, I'll be happy. Or when I meet the love of my life, I will be happy. We don't allow ourselves to be happy right here in this very moment.
People go through spurts of loving themselves, but mostly, we spend so much time during the day "beating" ourselves down. It seems that when our thoughts are not about the past, or not about the future, (or perhaps even during those times), we are thinking about how we are not good; how we make a "stupid" mistakes. How often do we think to ourselves, I'm wonderful! We may have a passing thought of I look great today. Or I'm a pretty smart cookie when we have an accomplishment. How often do you just take the time to say I'm a great person? Generally, we don't. Instead, we cycle through why we are not good enough.
Subconsciously, we think we don't deserve to be loved, and yet we seek love with a vengeance. Perhaps, secretly, unconsciously, we are looking for love from our self, but deny that one thing that could make all of the difference in the world. Perhaps if we let go of the past, let go of the future, be here in the now with the sounds of the world around us, our own breath, feeling the temperature of the space we are in, we could come to a stillness and find that we are good enough.
