befriending time
"the time is always right to do what is right"
I have often felt antagonized by time. Behind, always behind.
Too old to [ ]. Too late to [ ].
Looming time. Haunting time. Time as spectre.
End times. Deadlines. Time as scythe.
I’ve felt time trickle through my hunched shoulders and cramped calves, drained away.
Let time spoil, left out overnight on the countertop.
Felt time running out. A sweat, a panic, a spiked pulse.
I’ve stuck my nose up at its reductive linearity,
(while slathering my face to evade fine forehead lines).
I’ve taken time too personally. Too literal, too punishing, too backed into the corner by it.
Fixated on the tic/king second hand instead of how it arcs, encircles, contains.
Because time can also surprise, can shift, can create anew. In the words of adrienne marie brown in the book Holding Change:
Time can bend. It’s so powerful to play with time. Cultures with long memories, still connected to their oldest ways, know that time is nonlinear, circular, mysterious.
I want to consider time not as stern and severe, inhibitive and foreboding, nor time as scarce and too precious to explore. I want to feel embraced by and curious about time; to play with and within it. adrienne continues:
When we are facilitating a space and we remember that time can bend, we focus not on time scarcity but on the people in the room, the presence and the work that must be done.
There is so much work that must be done. I’ve found myself honestly immobilized to write here with how much agony – death, starvation, cruelty, violence – there is in Palestine, in Sudan, in so many pockets of the globe, driven by malice and supremacy, capital and cowardice. And I know my quiet despairing, pleading for time to stand still, does nothing, only atrophies me.
I am not in the room with federal lawmakers to scream at them about their morally bankrupt hypocrisy. But I am in other rooms, with other people, and in this room here now, with you. And it’s worth it to be present, to hold the gift of it. And it’s worth it to name and to do the work that must be done.
The time is always right to do what is right. The refrain is one I’ve carried with me echoed from my early community organizing days. To me it means: today is a day where you can shift into a braver self. There is no perfect moment to begin to do the work, and who you’ve been in the past does not define how you show up today. I looked it up recently and found a clip from a Martin Luther King, Jr. speech delivered in Chicago in 1966. His whole quote:
The prophet must remind America of the urgency of now. The oft-repeated cliches – The time is not right, Negros are not culturally ready – are a stench in the nostrils of God. The time is always right to do what is right. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to transform the bleak and desolate midnight.
It is time to confront today’s cliches that keep us “removed” from that which we are inextricably a part of, complicit within, responsible for. It is time to see and know and hold and wield a light that cuts through the peril of this particular moment of midnight.
Time calls us to reflect on where we invest our energy, who we center, who we care for.
Who we could do better to speak up in support of. How we can do better to strengthen from within.
I recognize that time is not an overlord or an adversary, nor is it elusive.
Not something to hide from, to chase, or to get ahead of. It does not mean me harm.
Time is something to walk alongside. A companion, a teacher.
Befriending time keeps me more honest, more thoughtful, more decisive.
Time is possibility. An opening. An invitation.
Consider:
What does time invite you to do today?
What does befriending time feel like for you?
Where can you make/take time to play with and within it?
What does time say when you sit to be present, to listen to it?
How does time call you forward?
It is time for justice, for liberation. What does that mean for the time you hold today?
In all that feels impossible, what’s possible right now?
As always, love to hear your thoughts in the comments below or by direct reply.
til soon and with love,
<3 h
Beautiful words and reflections, Hollis.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!