Leaving the World of Time

I'm sure we've all found ourselves a prisoner of time, whether we're aware of it or not. It's nearly impossible to go about your day without glancing at a clock, a cell phone, a watch....whether merely to satisfy the curiosity of knowing what time it is or to check how late we're about to be for some important engagement. This may seem harmless enough, but as we grow older this "time keeping" seems to override our very sensibilities, making us crazy with the anticipation and stress of looming appointments and deadlines. Perhaps you may relate to the typical morning routine: an alarm goes off signaling it is time for you to leave your peaceful sleep and begin to prepare for the day. The watch on your arm indicates you should have left for work 10 minutes ago if you wanted to arrive on time. The morning news radio announcer indicates the time periodically as you drive to work, telling you just how much of a delay the traffic is causing. At work the painful seconds tick by, telling you when to gather in the conference room for the weekly meeting, when to have lunch, and finally when you're free to leave. At home it's more of the same: dinner time, bed time, so little time if one is really taking notice. Before you realize it, the day is over and ready to start again with the constant awareness of some clock telling you when and what you need to be doing. While many of us perform this routine like clockwork (pun certainly intended), how often do we stop and ask ourselves if this is at all enjoyable, or if there is some other way to do things that doesn't require constant attention to a concept that humans made up in the first place? My solution is to ignore all numerical indicators of the time as often as possible. Wake up naturally, do your routine and get to work when you get there. This obviously has the potential to cause serious problems, as employment in most sectors requires an almost neurotic attention to timeliness. I find it discouraging that we cannot seem to come together as a society of intelligent, independent individuals and agree that life would be much simpler and less hectic if we could only find a way to get our jobs done without relying on this obsession with time. I've been actively working on my own ways to remain outside the world of time, and each moment of freedom makes me even more confident that this fight is well worth it. So toss the watch. Try to live in the moment you're already in, instead of worrying about the ones ahead. You might find yourself enjoying things you'd normally miss. Afterall, didn't someone say it was the "little things" that made life worth living in the first place?