The first gift

Like a lot of Americans, I’m preoccupied with schedules and appointments. I look at the clock every few minutes and calculate how much time I have for my current task and when the next deadline will arrive. It’s been like that for so long that I hardly think about it.

There are no clocks in the Church of the Holy Light of the Queen. I wasn’t wearing a watch. My cell phone was within reach but turned off.

After a few hymns and a period of silence, I looked up at the sun coming through the opening in the roof of the yurt. My mind went where it does at such moments and I wondered how much longer the service would last.

Then I thought, “Who cares what time it is?” It felt nice to stare at the daylight with no anxiety for what might come next.

Suddenly, a huge weight fell off my body. It felt like chains breaking and falling away. As the Daime tea expanded my perspective from the small ego to a much larger place, I looked down and saw the burden I’d been carrying my whole life.

The compulsion for time shrank down into a small blob. As I watched it recede, I understood what I’d done—I let clocks and schedules fill up my life and take over. I surrendered to them as they whipped me onward faster and faster.

I looked up at the sun coming through the roof of the yurt, the only timekeeper I needed. I felt light and clear.

That happened ten days ago. I’m back in the world of schedules and deadlines, but I don’t feel driven anymore. I feel less hurried, more patient. When the obsessive need to check the clock returns, as it has a couple of times, I recognize it and I know how to put it back in its place.

I’m very grateful.