TIME OUT:Our relationship with time has a deep psychology, writes MARIE MURRAY
BIDING TIME is a specific concept of time allocation. It is different to spending time, which has a commercial ring to it. It differs from saving time, which equally implies some financial investment. Biding time is about patience. It is about letting life unfold in its own time. It is not about hurrying towards a specific goal but knowing that change can come about equally well by waiting. Biding time lets what needs to be revealed be revealed and emerge in its own time, unhurried by human interference.
Biding time is similar to – but not the same as – waiting. Waiting is a goal-oriented active process. We wait for something that is specific and that we have expectations of arriving or occurring in a measurable future.
Biding time has a gentler pace. It allows time to pass by in its own way, knowing that what will be will be.
Our relationship with time has a deep psychology. It is complex. It is ambivalent. And it changes with the passage of time itself. Because time is not just something that we measure, allocate, determine and expend. While we have command over how we use it, it always has the greater power. While we may wait for time to pass and for anticipated events to arrive, time does not wait for us.
Time progresses regardless of our wishes, interventions or attempts to arrest it. We are both beneficiaries of its bounty and at its absolute mercy. Time does not pause when we would wish it too, nor will it advance speedily from that which we wish to avoid; it will not hurry towards what we desire or return to what we might wish to revisit. It has its own pace, concurrent with our lives and how we live them, irrespective of how we do so.
Our existence is measured by time from birth to death, and these dates are inscribed in our last resting place. We are each allocated a quota. How we expend it is up to us. Whether we enjoy it, savour it, share it with others, assign it to specific activities, plan our use of it or see what it brings depends upon us, our construal of time and our personal motivations. Or so we thought. But our relationship with time is not just personally significant, it has other implications depending upon how it is construed and used in families, in social groups, nationally and internationally.
This is why when we mess with time we hurt the present and damage the future in a way that has serious consequences for everyone in society. For example, we have been through one of the least admirable economic phases in our country, essentially based on the maxim “time is money”.
Time became a fiscal measure rather than a human one. Investment in property and shares rather than people dominated thinking. Time’s relevance was economically determined, time’s passage financially evaluated and the future determined in terms of asset appreciation with time.
Now we wait for time to recompense the errors of such thinking, for time to recoup our losses, return us to fiscal security and bring future compensation if we exert prudence in the present.
But those being asked to bide their time, to defer their pensions, to give time to solve what others created are angry: not about the loss of money, but about the loss of time. For many this is time they can ill afford to enjoy what was promised, reap what they worked towards, benefit by what they saved for, what they invested in, what they believed they would have and deserved, having served their time in thriftiness.
It takes time to get the measure of time, to appreciate its limits and to learn how to resource it. With the passage of time comes understanding that time is the most valuable currency one can possess and the theft of time a most abusive theft. This is why there is such anger towards those who tainted time with money in unholy profligate alliances, through which their most valuable asset of time has been stolen from everyone.
Marie Murray is a clinical psychologist and author and director of the student counselling services in UCD. Her weekly radio slot, Mindtime, on Drivetimewith Mary Wilson, is on RTÉ Radio One on Wednesday