Learning the Time of Nature

“Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Have you ever said, or heard someone say, “I need to carve out more time for...

my kids, my partner, getting in shape, cooking homemade meals, spending time

outdoors, or starting that side hustle.”

Whatever the reason, the phrase “carving out time” was used with the intention

of squeezing or manipulating one more good thing into your daily schedule.

Unwittingly, our lives can quickly be driven by our list of things-to-do.

Therefore if we’re not careful, we can quickly fall into the belief that life is all

about efficiency and productivity.

But what if there was another way?!

Author Jan Johnsen, in her her book, Heaven is a Garden, grapples with the

difference between mechanical time and nature’s time.

“Human time (mechanical time) is run by the clock and calendar. It divides our

days into hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds. It is, as Alan Lightman writes in

his book Einstein’s Dream, ‘as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron

that swings back and forth, back and forth; unyielding, predetermined...’

Mechanical time exerts a constant pressure on our lives, suspending all else.

Nature’s time, on the other hand, is unrushed. It is as eternal as a granite boulder

and as fleeting as a snowflake on a sunny winter day. It needs no device to

measure it. The sun’s rays and moon’s waxing and waning are its dutiful keepers.

Nature’s time affords depth and adds a patina to outdoor elements. Wood grays

out and becomes the colour of stones over time. Stones become covered with moss

and lichen and become the colour of the woods. Time burnishes everything with

change, wrought be the passing years.”

I wonder, would we experience a deeper sense of congruence or harmony in our

lives if we but slowed down, breathed deeply, and practiced being fully present in

the now?

Until next time...

Thrive in harmony.