Time, as we all know, has always remained an important aspect of everyone’s life. There is this Chronological time, which is important for us to be efficient every day. If, for example, I have to meet someone, a time must be fixed so that we do not arrive at different hours. Similarly, a deadline is required if a project has to finish. So, chronological time has its importance in our lives. But there lies another aspect of time – the psychological time. Although no attention is paid to the Psychological time, it has a far more bearing on our lives than the chronological time.
Psychological time is past and future, experiences, achievements, failures, all accumulations etc. which we carry, always. This time is in the mind. It would be far more apt to say that mind is time. Without mind, where is the time? But what is not understood with great sincerity is that each moment that this psychological time is carried is bound to be dull, bored, mechanical, heavy and non-creative. Why? If one is full with the past and all that, how would the energy flow? Because all that only blocks energy. And there would be no spontaneity, creativity, love, joy, freedom.
We are continuously engaged in analyzing the past or dreaming about the future – oscillating in past and future. How good or bad it was; how pleasurable or boring it was and so what future do I want. What we seldom realize is that all analysis of past and future makes a businessman out of us since it is engagement in figuring out the balance sheet of life. How much of pleasure, pain, happiness, sorrows, supports, deceits, failures, successes. And a businessman cannot have a relationship but only business (even in the relationship). Relationship has its existence in relating. And relating is an act of present – now – in the moment.
Everytime one relates with someone with past as the basis, one would invariably be engaged in manipulations for the heck of influencing and maintaining a cordial and sweet relationship. And this would be true for every relationship – friends (so called), husband and wife (supposedly the closest), parent and child, siblings, teacher and student, employer and employee. No relationship escapes. Very clearly, business is going on.
A very popular theory – Transactional Analysis – says that we operate from a position of Parent, Adult or Child, everytime. Although the theory attempts to explain human behavior, its very name loudly says – Yes- it is transaction. And the way we operate/ relate, ‘transaction’, which is a characteristic of business, goes on.
For life to become energetic, joyful, creative the psychological time must cease to exist. Have we not seen how energetic a child is? What we have not paid attention to is that a child doesn’t have memory. And hence no past, no accumulated experience and no thinking and making plans for future too. And so all the energy is available to him every moment. Nothing is lost in figuring out the balance sheet of life.
This, indeed, is a huge challenge to us. To be free from the burden of psychological time. Life is beyond the psychological time.