Time and Intimacy

Do people share their time or are already in their own time?

This question reminded me of a situation in which I experienced some days ago. I was walking to the supermarket. It was about noon, it was a sunny day and the sky was clear. The traffic was a little bit heavy and many people were out. I was sometimes connected to the surroundings and sometimes with my feelings and concerns about what I had to do that day. There was underneath a feeling of ease because it was a sunny day and the temperature was neither too hot nor too cold.

And then, all of a sudden, there was a car crash. A loud sound unfolding in a shock wave. Everybody turned around to see what happened. Everybody shared the same “feel”, the same aliveness, followed by astonishment and curiosity and surely many judgments. And the connection, the point of tangency, shared during the shock wave was lost among a labyrinth of comments and judgments. I myself wondered how that happened, if someone was injured and the trouble with all that people and cars.

But looking carefully about the day of the crash I wondered in which situations people let themselves be touched by others or by the environment, and how much enmeshed they are with their own stories that they do not allow themselves to connect to other people. Then, I wondered about sharing time with other people.

From my part I can say that I am sometimes stingy about this. I need an inner allowance to be open and connect to them or to pay attention to the connection happening on the spot. The more I connect, the more I share the intimacy of time with whoever or whatever is around me.

I like to conclude repeating some phrases of the poet David Whyte posted recently that are very inspiring:

Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity. Everything is waiting for you.