I believe I have actually made some headway in my battle with time! Like fear, I’ve always thought time was an uncontrollable thing. You can’t stop it from passing and so everything is constrained by it. Right? Wrong. It’s just another thing that is happening. And I decide how much effect it has on me at any given moment. That’s the key and another fine reason to pursue mindfulness. Taken as a whole, of course time is a dictator of our inevitable fates. But here in the moment, divorced from the illusory potential of the future, time is irrelevant. It honestly does not matter what happens next when I am rooted in the now, paying strict attention to the incredible complexity of what is occurring and how I am relating to it.

It’s a commitment I have to make. Mindfulness is a decision about what is important, a specificity of focus that is entirely under my control. One of the few things that responds directly to my will. Rare and beautiful.