You Have the Watches, We Have the Time

The trouble is that you think you have time. - Jack Kornfield in the Zen Calendar (August 29, 2006)

Day 83. Serendipitous synchronicity! Two things happened today that gave me ideas for blogging. I KNOW -- on a MONDAY, even!

I have the privilege of co-leading an amazing therapy group at my practice on Monday nights. The five members comprising the group are insightful, motivated, caring women who have worked hard to establish a cohesive and mature setting in which they explore important issues in their lives. It began as a therapy group for eating disorders. It evolved into a sophisticated context for change.

Tonight the topic of values emerged. I pointed out that the value of something usually increases when we are deprived of and/or have insufficient amounts of it. I humbly revealed that I place enormous value on sleep, going to great lengths to obtain and protect it. This prompted a discussion of what, exactly, each of us values. Group members began to disclose "three things (they) value." Family and friends, helping others, competency, creativity, and beauty made the top ten list. One member wisely noted that when our behavior deviates from our values, the result is depression, anxiety, and other painful emotional states. This raised the question of why we sometimes behave incongruently with our values.

The same group member told a delightful story in which she was writing in her journal about how important spending time with her son was. At that moment, her son came up and asked her to come watch him do something, and she told him that she couldn't because she was busy writing! She quickly recognized her blunder, put down her pen, and proceeded to ACT on her values by attending to her son. The group members chuckled and nodded encouragingly. They shared similar recollections of "valuing" one thing and doing another.

The discussion turned to an examination of what our culture at the macro level seems to value. This may be on the brink of shifting, but until quite recently "Big" seems to be - well - BIG in our society, whether it pertains to square footage in a home, portion sizes in restaurants, bonuses, the size of high-salaried athletes, half-time entertainment, or breasts. Fast (as in speedy) is valued, as is winning, growing, expanding (back to "big"), acquiring, having, owning, succeeding, and achieving.

We wondered about the cognitive dissonance implicit in valuing things that mainstream society devalues. When the group began to associate to values and behavior that most contributed to happiness and contentment, a vastly different "top ten" list emerged. It included placing value on unstructured time, sharing, cooperating, belonging, connecting, trying new things, giving, and creating. Someone then stated the obvious: western culture places greater value on traditionally masculine pursuits and perspectives than on traditionally feminine viewpoints. The group concurred that reincorporating feminine values was necessary to lessen the great suffering in our world. No surprises here -- this is, after all, a group comprised of women.

On my drive home after group, there was a wonderful speaker from Slow Foods, Inc. on NPR. I missed the first part of the show, and couldn't locate the name of the speaker. He ended with a delightful story in which he had traveled to Italy for a meeting of farmers and shepherds addressing world hunger and agricultural problems. He was exhausted and grumpy from difficulties with his flight from the U.S. to Italy. He then learned that there was a group of shepherds in attendance who had walked for two days before catching a bus to catch a shuttle to catch their flight to the conference. The speaker knew some Italian, and was repeatedly asked by the conference host to apologize to the shepherds as they had to wait even longer for a shuttle to the conference hotel. After three or four apologies at 30-minute intervals, the leader of the shepherd group smilingly said, "Please stop apologizing. YOU have the watches, but WE have the time."

I think the shepherds had wisdom that many westerners do not. We value time according to our illusion of being able to manipulate it: cheating it, saving it, condensing it, measuring it, pressuring it, rushing it, constricting it, rationing it. The shepherds had a very different relationship with time. They seemed to understand the value of time itself, through surrendering, accepting, and respecting it. I don't know if time is a masculine or feminine value; it probably depends on the relationship with it.

Perhaps time transcends gender. I think Jack Kornfield had a healthy respect for time - or at least the passage of it. I'm going to meditate on these topics of values and time. When I'm watching my breath, it feels like I have all the time in the world.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc