The Shape of Time

Released, Mastered, Played With.

"Não vai dar tempo,” my husband greets his sister. It's the private joke of the hurried. There isn't enough time.

I identified. Then I didn't.

My changing relationship with time since I left my corp job has been bubbling, absorbing signals along my path: observations about patience versus anxiety, thoughts on ephemerality or permanence, questions about past and future.

Two weekends ago, we had a visit from a dear friend who's just finished cancer treatment. For her, time has turned into opportunity. She sees everything in a better light. It's enviable.

Together, we visited the Glenstone Museum in Maryland. The guide who took us into one of Andy Goldsworthy's three Clay Houses introduces the artist as "a very patient man." Goldsworthy's art makes me think of time as irrelevant. His works are built from nature, made of ice, leaves, mud, and vines. They can take a moment or ages to produce, and they can last an instant or centuries. The Clay Houses at Glenstone will last several lifetimes. Other works of his – like "rain shadows" (created by lying on the ground to create a dry spot while the rain falls) disappear on the weather's whim.

Andy Goldsworthy: Clay House "Hole”

I've also been finding new faces of time in every new book I've recently read: time is a pendulum in Doris Kerns Goodwin's An Unfinished Love Story, a history of the 60's. In Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, you see how time has never been in the business of kindness. Katie Williams' My Murder helps you imagine how even stranger times may yet come.

Time Released

It's silly to say that now I have more time. It's both obvious (I no longer have a job) and false (the quantity of time on any given day has not changed). I'm no longer anxious about time, also for obvious reasons: I don't have multiple looming deadlines. My routines for writing, new business ideas, places to visit, and people to see flow effortlessly.

Time has morphed from a force within me, making me move at a pace that left no time for thought and a sense of always-on urgency, into a protective envelope I no longer wish to escape from. As my agenda cleared, I felt freer to push even more noise out of the way. My phone is on permanent do-not-disturb mode.

Now, time is a comforting warm blanket. It happened without my having to go into an Ashram or climb Everest. It happened just because, organically. I don't have wise words about how I got here.

Time Mastered

A Substacker I love, Mario Gabriele of The Generalist, just published The Jensen Huang Playbook. Huang, co-founder and CEO of the unstoppable Nvidia, is one tough leader to work for. While he pushes his teams to "move at the speed of light," he also operates without a schedule, calendar, or plan.

"Rather, Huang chooses how to spend his time day by day, optimizing his time moment by moment," writes Gabriele.

Here is one of the most intelligent, most successful people on the planet, not planning, not running from meeting to meeting, not checking his watch.

What I take from Huang's moment-by-moment outlook on time is renewed admiration for leaders I've worked for in the past who tended to be late more often than not because another conversation they were engaged in had spilled over.

Time Played

Another sculpture at Glenstone, Jeff Koons' Split Rocker, changes with the seasons and within the seasons, as live flowering plants bloom, change hues, and die. The rocker is a horse from one perspective, a dinosaur from the other. It's so large that you see it as a speck from all different corners of the Glenstone grounds. It's as beautiful as it is clever.

Jeff Koon's Split Rocker

Time is the same: changeable in a thousand ways. It's a child waiting for a birthday, and a weary traveller waiting for a delayed flight. It's hours we waste and hours we don't have enough of. Boredom, patience, and anxiety all rolled into one.

No one needs another guide to time management. It's enough to understand how time is a toy that toys with us, like Koons' Rocker. Today, time will feel different than tomorrow. It's mischievous that way.

So, here you go: If you have that familiar feeling of 'não-vai-dar-tempo' anxiety, try the Mad Libs game below. Embrace the silliness of it all wholeheartedly. And maybe, even if just for a minute, change your perception of time from taskmaster back into toy.

Time Mad Libs

(Printable version here)

Grab a pen and paper and write down a word for each of the prompts below without peeking at the story.

1. A Number (from 5 to 15): ___________

2. An Adjective: ___________

3. A Place: ___________

4. A Feeling: ___________

5. A Verb Ending in "-ing": ___________

6. Type of Animal (Plural): ___________

7. An Adverb (how you do something): ___________

8. A Noun (Plural): ___________

9. Another Number: ___________

10. A Unit of Time (e.g., hours, eons): ___________

11. An Adjective Describing You: ___________

12. Your Favorite Childhood Toy: ___________

13. A Verb (an action word): ___________

14. The Monster You Most Fear: ___________

15. Your Silliest-Sounding Word: ___________

16. Your Favorite Sensation (e.g., warm sun on your skin): ___________

---

Now, fill in the blanks of the story below with the words you chose.

When I was [1]___________, my relationship with time was [2]___________. At [3]___________, I always had a feeling of [4]___________, constantly [5]___________. Time felt like a herd of [6]___________ moving [7]___________ toward tomorrow. [8]___________ were measured in tiks and toks, and I felt like I had only [9]___________ [10]___________ to spare.

But [11]___________ me knows better now. I know time is just a [12]___________. Time [13]___________s. Time isn't [14]___________. It's [15]___________.

Time is feeling [16]___________.