Carefree Timelessness

We live in the age of communication. The communications revolution has been driving the world economy for decades, and our lifestyles are constantly adjusting to the latest advances. Yet the communications revolution clearly has not increased our ability or willingness to communicate on a meaningful level.

The reason we neglect most of our legitimate needs is that they require our rarest resources: time and energy. Relationships are no different.

Relationships thrive under one condition: carefree timelessness. Quality time is now the discredited fantasy of an age that wanted more of everything except the things that really mattered. You cannot schedule quality time with your spouse or with your children. If you want twenty minutes of quality time with someone you love, schedule three or four hours with him or her one afternoon, and chances are, somewhere in the middle of that three or four hours you will have your twenty minutes of quality time.

When I was sixteen, I had a friend back home in Sydney. From time to time he would call me and say, "Let's waste some time together one day this week." That was his line, and what a wonderful lesson that one line taught me. We used to go out and have coffee or dinner. We would just talk, and laugh, and share stories. Sometimes we would even share a passage from a book one of us was reading. Were we wasting our time? No, of course not. Those times we shared were anything but a waste of time.

In our busy world, there is a tendency for us to try to contain our relationships in little boxes on our schedules. Too often the time we do set aside for relationships is on the perimeters of our already busy lives, so we approach our relationships without the energy they demand in order to be fruitful and fulfilling.

Relationships don't thrive under the pressures of our modern-day schedules. All of life's important relationships thrive under the condition of carefree timelessness. Learn to waste time with the people you love.

~ Matthew Kelly
Excerpt from The Rhythm of Life: Living Every Day with Passion & Purpose