Tag: focus

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “happy place.” Write the first thing that comes to mind when you think of “happy place.” Have fun!

I want to talk about Time. Human beings have calibrated it to milliseconds and like many things we make possible to measure, we feel that we can manage it. Don’t get me started on the ‘Climate Crisis’. The arrogance of human beings is beyond measure. The belief that we can control or manage the Natural world is absurd. But I digress.
Time is an oppressive force according to my sensibilities. Escaping that ‘weight’, even in small episodes, is my ‘happy place’. I don’t wear a watch. Why should I? The ticking of time is all around us. Clocks are everywhere and the calendar is mentioned or referred to many times a day. But I want you to know that it is possible to step away from that tick, tick, ticking existence.
Have you ever been absorbed in a book, movie, or project, and lost all concept of time? To me, that is the most freeing place I can be. Freedom looms large in my soul if you haven’t noticed.
There are times while I’m at my camp when I feel weightless and lost. So much so, that I ask what time it is and truly have no idea if it’s 11:00 am or 2:00 pm. It’s a glorious experience that to many on ‘timed existences’ would be dizzying and might even give them a feeling of being off-balance.
Schedules and deadlines are necessary, but I dread them. I love winter in New England for the peace, beauty, but mostly for those snowstorms. On a snowstorm day, life slows almost to a stop. Businesses close, travel is unlikely, and no one expects you to BE anywhere. The world is yours for your own sake.
Gosh that’s grand!
I often write about ‘living in the moment’ and I pursue that every day. In retrospect, my choice to spend most of my days with children [animals too] came from my, then unrecognized but looming, pursuit of shunning time. Kids and animals truly do live in the moment and that is where time releases you from its grip.

I am an unapologetic Star Trek fan and have been since I first sat too close to the ‘boob tube’ in the 1960s drinking in all the mind-blowing themes it presented. This stream of consciousness brought one of my favorite themes in the movie Star Trek Insurrection immediately to mind. It is the perfect ‘cherry on top’ of this post. I’ll share it below with a brief explanation for people who are not Star Trek buffs.
Happy Saturday friends! Try to take some time for yourself today!

Here are two (very short) scenes from Star Trek Insurrection that express what I’ve talked about.
Captain Picard and his crew have encountered a foreign human race who live on a planet that, because of unique conditions, are capable of living for centuries. In these clips, he learns a lot about time from one of the inhabitants. Enjoy!