Time

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.

….Leonardo da Vinci

What do you want to create?

Three days before the stay at home order became effective, I was sitting with a friend who had recently quit his job and did not know what he was going to do. He was lamenting that he did not know where he fit in this world. 

So, I asked him if he had ever watched the series The Last Ship. He said no and I proceeded to give him the rundown. The plot is simple: a virus wipes out the world and the only remaining people live on a navy ship in the middle of the ocean. Spoiler alert! When they return to land, they start a new government where the captain becomes president.

I asked him to pretend he was this captain-turned-president in a land with a clean slate. I told him that he could create the world however he wants it to be. Then, he wouldn’t have to find his place in the world because he would be the one creating it. 

This universal down time has given us all a chance to really look at how we have been living and ask ourselves, does it serve us? Does driving two hours a day to a job, eating fast food, barely seeing the sun, having limited time with friends and family, or being far from nature sound like a good life to us? Perhaps the only silver lining of this whole pandemic is that life seems to be slowing down in order for us to recreate the world in our own image.

Looking back, I feel that I have been preparing my community for this challenge by engaging them in my philosophy and routine. Most of them are getting along because they have built up their immune systems, created schedules to self-motive, and developed communities they can rely on via video conferencing. Without constant interruptions and daily distractions, we now have open schedules to reflect on life’s big questions.

Chief among those questions is the following: How do I want the world to look?

I want people to be able to work at home and use video conferencing to connect. I want workers who have to be on the roads to have an easy time getting to and from their destinations. I want school work to become more efficient with parents who have time to help out. I think its a powerful, bonding experiment to put parents in charge of their kids’ schedule, helping them plan their daily lives so that they don’t all go nuts cooped up in the house.

At my retreat, we start with yoga for an hour and then breakfast. The morning session till lunch is spent on challenging exercises. After lunch the group is broken up into teams and they co-write a song. They create and work on a project together. We then have dinner and share what we did that day. I can see something similar working very well for a family. Balanced and well thought out schedules can cover all the bases.

How are you using this time to transform your life and career to best serve you and the planet? What schedule are you creating so that you can move forward through this crazy time and be the better for it on the other side?