Your Time Radar

"Just adjust your Time Radar", Lance thought as he was driving from Asheville NC straight west on Rte 40 through the winding Smoky Mountains toward Nashville,Tennessee. He landed on that phrase while trying to explain to himself what was happening to him every day on this odyssey . Having no particular destination seemed to make no difference in his enjoyment of each day, Lance concluded. And there was no one he expected nor wanted to meet, so people were irrelevant. Having things, buying things, finding things, seeking things was the farthest thing from his mind. (Well, weekly he needed a laundromat for two hours...) Lance realized that people, places and things didn't affect the quality of his days, so what was so radically different about this trip that appealed to Lance? What variable in his perception or behavior generated such joy and satisfaction?

Time. Time was completely different. He couldn't be late or rushed since he had no metric of deadlines or schedule to meet. He ate when he was hungry, not by the clock. He slept when he felt like it and while a 6 AM wake up was relentlessly programmed into his body there were no consequences to staying in bed as long as he checked out of the hotel by 11. Distance, as a function of time, didn't matter either. Driving one hour or six made no difference since his mind was always chewing on some nugget of an idea. Even as he drove, he scribbled notes to himself on little note pads stolen from the last hotel room. Time stopped. Nothing was boring, anxious, frustrating, stressful or demanding. Time was gone or at least irrelevant. Even sunrise and sunset were inconsequential to Lance who woke up in daylight and didn't notice sunset because he was typing away in a hotel room almost every night at sunset.

His Time Radar had been adjusted...

Every weather radar Lance had ever seen on TV had a set range with the sweep arm reaching out so many miles into the mountains, other counties, other states, etc. Depending on how the operator sets it, it can scan a huge area or quite one quite small and specific. Same with the GPS in his car. Lance noticed that he could set the range to look out 200 miles or 200 feet. Correspondingly, the cursor on the screen would move either very slowly on the long distance map or very fast on the smaller scale map. So it was with time in his new world. Lance had set his time radar to one day (think 200 feet or very close.) Anything outside of that time frame was only vaguely interesting to him and and certainly not top of mind. NOW was everything.

You can't be bored when you live completely focused on this very moment of being, Lance figured. Most thoughts have a very short life span and either you think it through now, or it passes out of sight and out of mind. When a thought occurred, Lance fully cherished it, played with it, expanded it, etc. When he found something worth keeping, he jotted down a few key words as he drove. (Instantly, he would hear the drum beat of the rumble strips beneath his wheels even as he veered back onto the roadway from the shoulder. NOTE: This is not a sustainable nor advisable practice, he admitted.) Still, by the end of each contemplative day, there was a pile of these little notes on his desk as he opened the laptop to write. (Even now, there are at least five such scribbled cheat sheets surrounding him.)

He had found a way to adjust his time radar down to such a small window of focus that he would drive for hours and often surprise himself that he had arrived when he felt like he had just left. More akin to sci-fi star travel in suspended animation than anything else, Lance admitted it was not dissimilar to smoking pot in the 70's when hours and minutes felt interchangeable. Only this time around, he remembered most of what he thought. In fact, hunger was gone, fear was gone, anxiety was gone...all the things he measured time and productivity by were all gone. Miles didn't matter when his true destination lay inside a thought, not outside the car. Fascinating. Lance had not expected this time warp phenomena when he was planning the trip. Truth be told, Lance didn't know what to expect from the trip other than to escape where he was, not to arrive at a new way of thinking. Once he removed all the usual benchmarks of his day- task, schedule, destination and intended outcomes- it now made sense that perception of time would become the only remaining variable.

But can it happen, at will, back in the life to which he would return? Maybe. If he consciously focused harder on the moment, the person, the issue, the creative thought right in front of him and not the next looming thing, time might become more flexible. Lance felt like every moment of this trip was fully realized, fully exploited and nothing wasted. Even when plans seemed not to work out as he expected, whatever DID happen was endlessly interesting and well worth the living, No regrets. That seemed to come with the deal. Suddenly, Harrison Owen's Open Space Technology (OST) "laws" popped into Lance's mind.

Whenever it starts, is the right time.
When its over, its over.
Whoever comes, are the right people.
Whatever happens, is the only thing that could have.

What to many people seems like gibberish, is in fact an acknowledgment of the basic reality of our daily life. There is no right start, right end, right people or right outcomes. There is ONLY whatever happened. And we control it.

As a philosophy of life, that seemed just fine from Lance's point of view. It said, get over yourself and blaming others. Get past the past and focus on now to make anything happen. If you really want to see something happen, YOU make it happen. Don't sit around and wait for the "right person" to come along (like some white knight.) And if you are waiting for the right time, it may never come. Lance, with this trip, had stopped waiting for the right time, person, circumstance, miracle or magic to arrive. He just went.

Dinner in Nashville that rainy night with a friend brought it all home. Here is a guy who moved to Nashville following his passion and talent for music. Music City was everything he thought it would be and over the past 20 years has made himself both known and respected by world class pros all over town as a songwriter and singer. He just hasn't made himself famous. Instead, he teaches high school biology to a challenging population of minority kids, serving selflessly as a rare and valuable male role model for the many. Right now, he spends his rare free time, rebuilding his nearly ruined house from the Great Nashville Flood of May 2010 that filled his first floor rooms shoulder high with muddy, polluted water from the nearby river. It is a thankless task in the heat and humidity of a summer in Nashville without A/C. Flood insurance falls far short of the standards he has for a place he dreams of calling home. It had taken its toll on his spirit and pocketbook. Looking ahead over the coming year of work he sees, life is hard.

But in the 20 year rear view mirror, it is clear to Lance that he has built a lifelong network of friends, professional accomplishments, many grateful students, a master's degree and a body most guys would kill for. Even now, he takes weekend rides on his Triumph motorcycle with no particular destination in mind and quietly confesses he feels fully in sync with this place and these people. Those blessings, especially his friends, his work, and his home are blessings many never know. His time radar needs to be adjusted to a day by day setting.

When he was young, Lance had an uncle who took him hiking our west. Frustrated with how hot, steep and long the trail seemed to be, Lance complained endlessly. Finally, his Zen like uncle, always gentle and unfazed, said "Focus just feet ahead of you on the trail instead of at the top of the next hill or horizon. Notice the leaves and sticks on the ground, they tell you about the trees overhead. Listen to the sound of the river, even though you can't see it. Take each step deliberately and joyfully, and the miles will melt" he intoned. And sure enough, they did.

Lance wanted to tell his friend to have heart, adjust your time radar a bit tighter, pay more attention to today and let the future and past take care of themselves.The miles will fly by. As they say, you may not live longer, but it will sure feel like it.

After the years of hearing that saying, Lance finally got it.