{"id":4478,"date":"2012-10-09T15:58:12","date_gmt":"2012-10-09T19:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/?p=4478"},"modified":"2012-10-09T15:58:12","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T19:58:12","slug":"time-like-a-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/10\/time-like-a-river.html","title":{"rendered":"time like a river ~"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I’ve always been short on time. At least since I was small.\u00a0 Then, there were summers. But even as a child, being the eldest meant watching sisters (and they know<\/em> how easy that was!), or walking the dog, or washing the car, or playing Scrabble with my grandmother (who was not above cheating…). I\u00a0 rarely set my own schedule.<\/p>\n

But lately, with a few exceptions — happily agreed to — I’m free to do just that. And it’s beyond addictive. In fact, despite having virtually limitless stretches of time rolling away before\u00a0 me like a ball of ribbon, I’m pretty protective of it. Ask me to do something, and I’m pretty sure to say ‘let me check my calendar.’ Because I really don’t want<\/em> three, or four, or sometimes even two<\/em> things to do in one day…<\/p>\n

Yesterday, for instance? I knew I had to do the laundry from the wonderful camping weekend I spent w\/ my niece. And check email that wasn’t available at camp. And water plants, feed birds, do dishes… normal maintenance. AND teach class tonight. So anything else?\u00a0 Seemed like too much…<\/p>\n

For me, a broken hour glass doesn’t mean the sands have run out, but that there’s no longer a measurement of time passing. I don’t have to worry about ‘spending’ time. It’s no longer a commodity. When things go a\u00a0 bit awry — traffic in front of me, or an unexpected phone call that needs attending to at that moment — it’s okay. I have time. Finally I know what that means. Time is mine.\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

If I want to sit on the deck in the cool morning air, and drink tea while I watch birds, I can. And not feel a deadline hovering over my shoulder. This week is absolutely to be looked forward to, to be lived moment by moment. The moments become almost liquid, time like a river…<\/p>\n

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to figure out; it’s kind of the whole meditation thing in a nutshell. Maybe that’s why my little old ladies always seemed so patient with me when I was small. They knew this secret: time really is infinitely expandable and contractable. Kind of like love ~<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve always been short on time. At least since I was small.\u00a0 Then, there were summers. But even as a child, being the eldest meant watching sisters (and they know how easy that was!), or walking the dog, or washing the car, or playing Scrabble with my grandmother (who was not above cheating…). I\u00a0 rarely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[165,310,90],"tags":[1227,11,1187,262,411,1248,412],"class_list":["post-4478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aging","category-being-here-now","category-feeding-your-inner-artist","tag-aging","tag-beginners-heart","tag-buddhism","tag-buddhist-blogs","tag-free-time","tag-living-in-the-moment","tag-retirement"],"yoast_head":"\ntime like a river ~ - Beginner's Heart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I've always been short on time. At least since I was small.\u00a0 Then, there were summers. But even as a child, being the eldest meant watching sisters (and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/10\/time-like-a-river.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"time like a river ~ - Beginner's Heart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I've always been short on time. At least since I was small.\u00a0 Then, there were summers. But even as a child, being the eldest meant watching sisters (and\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/10\/time-like-a-river.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beginner's Heart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-10-09T19:58:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/files\/2012\/10\/broken-hourglass-150x150.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Britton Gildersleeve\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"time like a river ~ - Beginner's Heart","description":"I've always been short on time. At least since I was small.\u00a0 Then, there were summers. But even as a child, being the eldest meant watching sisters (and","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/10\/time-like-a-river.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"time like a river ~ - Beginner's Heart","og_description":"I've always been short on time. At least since I was small.\u00a0 Then, there were summers. But even as a child, being the eldest meant watching sisters (and","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/10\/time-like-a-river.html","og_site_name":"Beginner's Heart","article_published_time":"2012-10-09T19:58:12+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/files\/2012\/10\/broken-hourglass-150x150.jpg"}],"author":"Britton Gildersleeve","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/10\/time-like-a-river.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/10\/time-like-a-river.html","name":"time like a river ~ - Beginner's Heart","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/10\/time-like-a-river.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/10\/time-like-a-river.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/files\/2012\/10\/broken-hourglass-150x150.jpg","datePublished":"2012-10-09T19:58:12+00:00","dateModified":"2012-10-09T19:58:12+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/#\/schema\/person\/b4348bfbe2223c0ec325db830aa95f52"},"description":"I've always been short on time. At least since I was small.\u00a0 Then, there were summers. But even as a child, being the eldest meant watching sisters (and","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/10\/time-like-a-river.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/10\/time-like-a-river.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/10\/time-like-a-river.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/files\/2012\/10\/broken-hourglass-150x150.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/files\/2012\/10\/broken-hourglass-150x150.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/10\/time-like-a-river.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"time like a river ~"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/","name":"Beginner's Heart","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Britton Gildersleeve","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/#\/schema\/person\/b4348bfbe2223c0ec325db830aa95f52","name":"Britton Gildersleeve","description":"Britton Gildersleeve is a 'third culture kid.' Years spent living on the margins - in places with exotic names and food shortages - have left her with a visceral response to folks \u2018without,\u2019 as well as a desire to live her Buddhism in an engaged fashion. She\u2019s a writer and a teacher, the former director of a federal non-profit for teachers who write. She believes that if we talk to each other, we can learn to love each other (but she's still learning how). And she believes in tea. She is (still) working on her beginner's heart ~","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/author\/brittongildersleeve"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/398"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4478"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4498,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4478\/revisions\/4498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}