Outside of time

I suppose you noticed that Christmas is coming.

We know it, too, and unless we want people to say, “The Grinch must live there,” we need to start decorating for Christmas.

But our calendars are full of other activities. There was Thanksgiving, there are meetings, there are events, there was a birthday to celebrate. The calendar is full and unrelenting.

A few days ago I played golf with three wonderful fellows. It was a beautiful day, a challenging course, and the men were terrific. Before we played, one of those men (Alex, in from Oklahoma) and I met with another friend of mine, Mark, for coffee and conversation.

I arranged that because they needed to know each other.

Alex retired five years ago and told us that every day he has just two decisions to make: “scrambled or fried, walk or ride.” Eggs every morning, golf every day. His calendar is — apparently — no longer in charge.

But even in that time together, we added something to our calendars. It turns out Alex will be back in Phoenix in a few weeks, this time with a friend of Mark’s, so we scheduled a round of golf. It is in my calendar, and I’m really looking forward to it. The fourth is in the College Basketball Hall of Fame, and maybe he’ll teach me how to focus better on the golf course.

They’re everywhere

I just looked at the App store, and there are more than a dozen different calendar programs for the Mac. Some of those have “in-app” purchases available, which means you can spend money to (theoretically) help you be more organized.

At the end of this year, we have received nearly fifteen 2025 wall calendars from nonprofits we’ve supported. They want us to remember them all year, I suppose, by looking at their calendar every day.

All of us know someone (perhaps even ourselves) who is dependent on organizational tools. A few years ago I tried very hard to live in the GTD (Getting Things Done) world. Those who live there are masters of calendars, reminder apps, notes, highly sophisticated and integrated email programs, and so forth.

I couldn’t do it.

Even back in the “carry this planner with you” days, I couldn’t do it. I know, because I was a top-level manager at a company where carrying a planner was part of the culture for those at my level and above. Naturally I wanted to fit in, so I really tried. And failed.

Why? Part of my defense (then and now) was to ask, “Where is the sense of adventure, the sense of possibility, if everything is scheduled?” Perhaps that was more rationalization than it was thoughtful answer, but I meant it.

Time

There are two forces in the world that hold us captive: space and time. Although we can only be in one place at a time, we have learned to shrink space. We do that by traveling from one space to another faster and faster. The four horsepower wagons that once carried people have given way to 400 horsepower cars, 12,000 horsepower trains, and 60,000 horsepower planes.

If we could realize the fantasy of Star Trek (“beam me up, Scottie”) and almost instantly move from one place to another, we’d have some claim over space. But we can’t.

Likewise we are generally held captive by time. We humans cannot travel in time, though many have fantasized about doing just that.

Notice that I said we are “generally” held captive by time. We cannot travel in time, but we can get outside of time.

The idea of being outside of time is one I first learned of in a letter written by C. S. Lewis. A friend of his had written to Lewis and had described an odd experience. It seems this fellow (Sheldon) and his wife were living on a boat. One cloudless night Sheldon woke up, got out of bed, and made his way to the bow of the boat, where he laid down and looked at the stars.

He realized that his wife had done the same thing, but they did not speak. Sheldon reported that sometime — though he could not guess when — he went back to bed.

Lewis wrote to him and said he had been “outside of time.” He noted that most of us have experienced that. If we have been involved in anything where time and the consideration of time no longer exist, we have been outside of time.

Schedules, calendars, and the like all work to keep us inside of time. Outside is better.

Somewhere in between

We cannot function fully in this world outside of time, and I’m not suggesting we try to live there. What I will suggest is that mostly we try very hard to live in the moment.

On this very day (Thursday, 12/5/24), I lived by the calendar and ignored the moment, and I also lived in the moment and set the calendar aside.

I began the day at 5:15 a.m., left the house at 6 a.m., and drove 35 miles to meet with a group of men from 6:45 to 8. During most of that meeting I had no idea what time it was. One of the men did, though, because he had to leave at 8. That brought me back to time.

Skipping ahead five or six hours I found myself back in the moment. Here is how.

I was in a conversation. I knew another meeting was coming and made a note of it. But as we chatted, the conversation with my friend changed. When it did, we both needed to be — certainly I needed to be — in the moment.

Those moments lasted so long (though it seemed like no time had passed) that I missed my scheduled meeting.

Somehow I knew where I needed to be in time. Circumstances overruled the calendar. I was not outside of time, but I was outside the calendar and in the moment.

Calendars are great, but it seems the very best things happen when we are living in the moment.

So live in the moment. It is incredible how much good gets done there.