Outside the biannual changing of the clocks, there is no greater evidence of the illusion of “clock and calendar time” than February 29.
Every four years we add a day to the month of February to account for the fact that man-created time increments don’t quite line up with the Earth’s rotation around its axis or around the Sun.
Because it turns out that it doesn’t not take exactly 24 hours or 365 days.
Some Leap Day Questions
Leap Day gets me thinking about the calendar system as a construct.
Why was February given 28 days when other months have 31?
Wouldn’t it have made more sense to even out the months at 30 with a few having 31?
Why doesn’t the secular calendar follow the cycles of the Moon or the transit of the Sun through the signs of the zodiac?
Both of these are observable astronomical events that happen on a regular, repeatable, rhythmic schedule.
Perhaps the most important:
How am I thinking about time?
Time as the “Content”
Today is Leap Day. We get a whole extra day.
The typical question to consider when we get “extra time” is “how will you use this time?”
How will you use this extra day?
This question is based on the premise that time is a resource, which is the most common way we think and speak about time:
Consider the language we use about time as a resource: as something to be used, allocated, managed, measured, spent, invested, given or taken.
We lose it and we find it.
We fret about time being a limited resource. We want more of it. We perceive that we lack it. We view it through a lens of scarcity. We lament we don’t have enough.
And we are endlesssly worried about wasting it.
In the context of time as a resource, we also speak about time as if it is moving:
Time moves quickly or slowly, it speeds up or it drags. It runs out or it gets away from us. It starts and stops.
These are not the only ways to think about time.
In this language of time as a resource or time as something that moves, time becomes the “content” of life. Time becomes the focal point.
Time as the “Container”
What if, instead of thinking of time as the content, we think about time as the container?
When time is the container, it is not time that is moving.
Rather, it is we who are moving through and within time.
Instead of thinking about time as something that is moving, consider that you are moving within time.
When time is the container instead of the content, we can ask different questions:
- How do you exist within time?
- How are you moving through time?
- How are you playing in time?
- How is time supporting you?
- Which structures of time best support you?
Instead of focusing on the movement or use of time, these questions focus on our actions — which is all we can control anyway.
Thinking about time as the container also removes the language of lack and scarcity that often accompanies conversations about time.
When time is the container, we can’t run out of it and it can’t run away from us.
When time is the container, we can’t lose track of it or waste it.
When time is the container, we don’t need to find it or manage it.
The truth is that time is in abundant supply. It is unending.
The Earth and Sun don’t know what month or day it is. The trees, flowers, and animals don’t know either. They know the rhythms of sunlight and darkness, of seasons and cycles.
This is the only real measure of time.
How could your life change if you stopped trying to find time and instead moved within the rhythm of time’s embrace?
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