There are two kinds of time.
The first kind is linear time. This is the time marked by clocks and calendars.
The second kind of time is the time marked by cycles, seasons, and rhythms. You can think of this as the “anti-clock” time.
If you track the movements of planets on the map of the zodiac, planets move anti-clockwise around the map when they are in direct motion.
The point isn’t to pick one type of time. It’s not about what’s better or worse.
We need linear time.
Without linear time, we wouldn’t be able to coordinate schedules and make plans with other people.
The problem is when we run our lives only on linear time.
Linear time is a human construct. The original measurement of time is in cycles, seasons, and rhythms. The most important things we create — from flowers or vegetables in a garden to our creative ideas to babies in the womb — are cultivated in cyclical time.
Flowers don’t know what month it is.
Babies aren’t born because the calendar says it’s time.
And your best creative work rarely appears simply because you’ve blocked an hour on the calendar.
Constant living on clock time creates hyper-vigilance in the nervous system; you’re always watching the clock, anticipating what next, but never really appreciating where you are. We lose presence to our lives this way.
To return to our essential nature, we need times in our weeks — and ideally in our days — when we can get off the clock and connect to cyclical time.
It’s only by getting off the clock that we can connect to our essential rhythms and find true restoration.
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