Obsession

The Double-edged Sword of Preoccupation

Time keeps on slipping…

As we get older time seems to slip by faster than it ever has before. Even though we measure time the same way that we have for centuries, it feels like there isn’t enough of it. Time moves through us all and the momentum gathers as our life expands, just like a rolling stone hurtling down a hill. We look down at our watch, or tap our smartphones and another hour has gone, just like that! Reminiscing to childhood I remember summer holidays feeling like they lasted forever, rich and detailed memories about time outside, time with friends and family, and vacations. Now, I struggle to remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

So, what’s that about? What has obsession got to do with all of this?

The psychology of our relationship with time

When I was training to become a therapist, I learnt a few things about how my relationship with time worked. We know that we have time that is unfolding before our eyes in the present, time which we have experienced which has become the past, and time which we are yet to experience which will happen in the future. We project our consciousness onto these different aspects of time depending on our emotions. Let me show you what I mean.

When I experience anxiety, I’m ruminating or preoccupied with thoughts which worry about a negative event transpiring in the future. A lot of the time my self-talk sounds like “What if?”. Sometimes, it’s about being late, it could be an intrusive thought about a family member suddenly being ill, or even a feeling of dread from reading the news or seeing a horrible headline. When I experienced depressive thoughts earlier in my life, this arose from thinking about troubling things that had happened in my childhood or from a time that I was ashamed about. My self-talk in my head would often sound like “Remember when?”. I’d often find myself revisiting difficult memories, like a lowlight reel that would play my most difficult times in my life.

What’s the point? Isn’t it interesting, we don’t just experience our consciousness in the present, we experience it across all the planes of time. They are like different gears that we shift into and away from as we move throughout our day. You won’t be thinking in the present, all day every day. I don’t know a single person that does that, and it probably wouldn’t be healthy either. Anxiety is a survival tool for our mind, thinking about the ‘What ifs’ is a great reason why we are sat here today, our ancestors had a collective and hard-wired desire to be aware and to a certain extent pre-occupied with danger. We ensured our survival as a human race up to this point because humans worried about food production, so agriculture was invented. We worried about sheltering from difficult weather, and so innovation in construction became a craft. Our ability to reflect on the tragic things that happened in the past is what allows us to learn to be better in the future. Revisiting the version of ourselves through our past memories gives us a greater self-awareness about who we are today. You get the idea.

Still with me?

As we get older our lives become more complicated. At least, I know mine has! There’s not a lot that seems that simple anymore. When I’m not working, I still feel I’m working in a way. Booking in a friend here, seeing family there, going to the Dr’s, seeing my therapist, sorting out bills, chasing down money, booking holidays, going out for work drinks, and don’t forget date nights. Everything above sadly doesn’t even include making time for ourselves (a topic for another substack I think). If was to ask you, what state of mind that this ‘busyness’ I listed above embodies, what would you say that it is? If I’m honest with myself I know it’s not the present.

It all begins to feel a lot like a hamster wheel or a treadmill. Spending so much time crafting and scheduling the future. Then, when I’m not thinking about the future, I’m ruminating in the past. So, now what do we do? It can feel hopeless sometimes, and we resign that time is just going to slip faster out of our fingers and there is nothing to do about it.

Well now, come, let’s examine some hope for a change. I was reading Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” last year, and it’s an impactful book because he challenges you to think on how much ‘now’ you are experiencing. He argues that there’s not a lot of room for now because as he calls it our “Incessant” consciousness is always talking away in our head all the time. Talking, which is taking away how much now we actually experience. There are exercises that Eckhart suggests in the book on tuning into our mind in such a way that we are purposefully not thinking. Not even thinking about supressing thinking. Just not thinking at all. It’s a practice, much like meditation is about observing and not engaging in thoughts. I tried the exercises for a few days and found myself amazed at how much I came back to this stream of thinking. I found it quite exhausting. The awareness of how much crosses our minds each day, and how little that we just be. How little we sit with ourselves in the present.

I want you to look at the watch on your wrist, look at the clock on your smartphone, or the clock on your desktop computer. Watch for 60 seconds, try not to think about the exercise, try not to think about not thinking about the exercise either. Your only job is to watch the seconds go by. In fact, your job is to watch 60 of them come and go. You’re a silent observer. After you’ve spent your 60 seconds looking at the time, I want you to do another exercise. Walk into the kitchen and make yourself a drink. It’s that easy. Engage and lean into the exercise, watch your hand as it opens to cupboard door to grab the mug, smell the coffee granules and watch them tumble as your pour them into the bottom of the cup. Watch the kettle shake, and the steam hurrying out of the spout as it boils. Notice and observe the moment as it plays out whilst you make the drink. What did you notice?

So often, we are on auto-pilot. It’s become a reflex at this point to make a hot drink at home. When was the last time you were present whilst making a drink? You’ve done it so many times before, and how many do you remember? During gentle rumble of the kettle boiling, we tend to get our phones out, dash into the other room to collect washing, look at our emails, check social media, or something else. We do anything except be. After reading “The Power of Now”, I looked back and realised there is reason why I can remember my summer holidays, why I have such wonderful and vivid memories, I wasn’t planning or predicting my future. I lived in the present moment, as kids do, and I think that there is a good case here for getting back to that.

The Obsession

So, what’s my obsession? It’s preoccupation. It is the opposite of awareness and attentiveness of ourselves and the present moment. I am obsessed with keeping my attention on my phone, on my emails, thinking about the future, with my work, with my fears, with the past. I don’t believe that I’m alone in this, and I believe that phenomenon like doomscrolling has become part of the conversation because everyone else is preoccupied too. It’s uncomfortable being with ourselves, because I think we’ve forgotten how to ‘be’. I think there is a leaf we can take out of elderly people’s books, in that they enjoy sitting on a porch and watching the world go by. They can go for walks, enjoy a coffee whilst people watching, and even enjoy a puzzle. Without sounding nostalgic there’s some lost art in the ‘old ways’ that I believe we can journey back to. I think there’s so much stimulation through our 24/7 digital world. Too much. It feels like I’m a viral TikTok trend away from a 2am bedtime each week. It doesn’t feel to me, that this is natural. Whilst I think that humans are always evolving and growing, I actually think that the rate of technology that is released that we have now, is far eclipsing our ability to adapt to. If you think just for now about social media, it’s hard to fathom that with Instagram you can be connected to over a billion people. A billion, how do we even wrap our heads around that?

So, in a full circle fashion. How can I slow down the runaway train of time? How do we reclaim our time and begin to live life like it’s happening right before our eyes? Well, it is. I recommend practising Mindfulness. Personally, I use the headspace app as they have loads of beginner courses which start out at 2 mins per session and grow into 10-15 minute sessions. I would highly recommend reading “The Power of Now”, the concepts can feel abstract, but stick with it and I promise you it’s worth it. It changed the way I think about my mind, and I think it will for you too. Create moments of present for yourself each day and make it a practice, before projecting your mind into the future becomes a default setting.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. Please let me know what you thought of this Substack.

How has your relationship with time moulded your life? What is your obsession? What topics would you love to see me cover here?