There's Always Tomorrow

  I have been observing an interesting tendency in myself lately, and that is, that I am afraid of procrastination. And I have a feeling that perhaps this fear is simply a reaction to earlier times in life when I had engaged in procrastination of some kind or another. But I often have had fears in the past of falling behind, taking a course and then realizing too late that I have not been attending any of the classes prior to the exam.  I think that this fear is quite interesting to examine, and I am quite sure that many would attribute it to an issue of wanting to control time. But I think that a lot of it comes from the fear of falling behind or losing control of one's life, which is a kind of existential anxiety.
     I have often read in Chan books that time is just a creation of the mind, but what does it mean in terms of time? One approach to life might be to say, "I have all the time in the world, and time is an illusion anyway, so I can do what I want with it." Under this view, there is no waste of time, since all of time is just part of a big dream of the mind. But does this work? If I were to act in this way, I would likely suffer a lot. There is a documentary movie I saw recently, A Dog's Life, where they interview homeless people who have attachments to their dogs. Many of the people prefer to live on the streets in order to preserve their companionship with their pets, rather than live in places where pets aren't allowed. One of the touching aspects of the homeless people interviewed in the movie is that many of them were simply living in a present moment--not attached to the weather, or having a full time job, or even having a stable place to live. As long as they had the love and companionship of their pets, they felt that things were fine for them. But even for the homeless people, shelter became a necessity, whether it's under a bridge or in a temporary home or in the backseat of a car. And as winter approached, the homeless people had to decide for themselves how they were going to prepare for their own survival. Time wins out in this case, and the ones who survive are the ones who accommodate the changing seasons.
     The other, opposite extreme is to make a fetish out of the sense of time. I think that Protestant society has become quite interested in time, particularly at the start of the Industrial Revolution when many pioneer managers were trying to measure output using time engineering. Time seems to equal productivity in the market economy of today, and I think the metaphor of 'time as money' has extended well into people's personal lives. We say things like "make the most of one's time", and even Master Sheng Yen writes, "The busy make the most of time." But an over-emphasis on time can lead to a sense of hurriedness, and this can take the form of feeling out of touch with the moment. I am reminded of a funny scene in a movie where the girl is dreaming of all these wonderful dishes she will taste when she is in Europe. The dream turns into a nightmare because the waiters in her dream keep taking away the dishes she is eating and replacing them with new dishes, faster than she can finish the previous. She ends up not enjoying the feast at all, or at least not being given the opportunity to do so. In that sense, the hurried sense of time has a way of deadening existence.
     I think, to go back to the Chan concept of time being illusory, the 'illusory' aspect of time is that it is referring to things that are changing continuously. In order to really be with our moments, we have to see things in a state of flux. But at the same time, this doesn't obviate the need for a sense of time, since we do have our obligations to meet expectations and responsibilities. Time is a useful tool to fulfill these obligations, but the difference is that time doesn't necessarily ever dictate how those responsibilities are fulfilled. If I am always trying to cram everything into one day, this will only leave me unable to put my whole heart and attention into anything.. At that point, everything I do becomes really superfluous, because I am not really and fully inhabiting the moment. But time is still a useful mental tool that can help to organize experiences. As long as I can understand the practical use of time and not see it as something imposed on me, I can use time to my advantage without imposing a dogmatic sense of time into my daily life.