When patience is a superpower

Try to imagine a life without timekeeping.

You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie.

Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays.

Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.

Those are lines from The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom. They demonstrate how measurement of time is an illusion that surrounds us.

Sure, this illusion is helpful – it keeps the assembly lines running, the trains on time and different corners of the world in sync. But it also exacts its cost. We are the only species on that planet that is late, hasty, tardy, rushed, delayed and always behind schedule. Rats don’t really run the rat race – only humans do.

Patience is a forcefield that shields us from the tyranny of timekeeping. When you’re patient, it doesn’t matter if a project takes 10 hours longer than anticipated, or if your package arrives 3 days later than scheduled.

The more our world is plagued by timekeeping, the more patience turns into a superpower.