The Sweetness of Time

As Jeff and I approach the end of our time here in Brisbane (41 days left) we've been reflecting on what you can and can't do in the course of a year. We haven't established the friendships we expected to. We didn't get engaged in the community to the level we expected to. We didn't "master" Australian culture and we sure as hell didn't pick up the accent!

Some things just take time, often more time than we expect. Adaptation -- especially at a deep level -- operates less on "mind time" and more on "heart time". When we want to change who we are in some ways, we have to operate on heart time.

I learned this in massage school. Learning to do massage can be pretty quick. A couple of months, maybe even a couple of weeks. To learn to be a massage therapist, though, takes at least a year (and that just starts the process). To learn to approach humanity, vulnerability, responsibility, and healing differently than you probably ever have before simply takes as long as it takes. It takes heart time.

In the last year I have managed to loosen the way I think about myself and my professional life. I have managed to find the room to truly imagine where I need to go next. When I left DC a year ago, I thought I could be an author and an educator. Now I know that I already am both of those things. A year ago I casually wondered whether Kitty Southworth and I might want to work more closely with each other. Now we have concrete plans to form a partnership and pull our professional lives in even closer parallel.

The trick is to respect the flow of time, to respect that some things take as long as they take. Time is a gift available to each of us. We work best with it when we ride with it instead of fighting it, trying to bottle it, control it, or "manage" it. Time is a better partner than a master or a servant.