Soon after I started meditating daily, I decided to stop wearing a wristwatch. I began to observe that wearing a watch was adding to my sense of time stress. I was focusing on what was next rather than on what I was doing in the moment. After I made my decision to take my watch off, I remembered the advice of one of my med school professors.
“When you’re seeing patients in the office,” he said, “you should never look rushed. The patient should never see you looking at your watch. If you need to know what time it is, you can look at the watch on the patient’s wrist.”
By meditating, removing my watch, and recapturing these wise words, I learned the joy of being in the moment with each patient, no matter how many were sitting in the waiting room. Each one got the amount of time they needed. Yes, sometimes, I ran behind schedule, but not by very much.
And each person knew they would get their allotted time once I came into the room, so they didn’t begrudge the time given to others. I managed to avoid the “doorknob syndrome” where patients wait until you’re about to leave. Then they bring up the true reason for the visit.
It’s a bit of a paradox that acting and feeling like you have all the time in the world makes you more efficient and more effective. I was reminded of the two different types of time I’d learned about. The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos.
Chronos refers to chronological or sequential time, the stress-inducing kind. Kairos signifies a moment of indeterminate time, almost a space in time, the way time feels when you lose track of it. Kairos lengthens or shortens according to its own internal logic.
Kairos is sometimes translated as being the time of opportunity. So, meditation helped me slip from chronos into kairos. I had space to fully engage with each patient, from the moment I took a breath and knocked on the exam room door.
Question: Have you ever felt like you had stepped outside of time? If so, share your experience in the comments below.
I can sort of relate to this, but in a different way. Recently, I stopped wearing my Fitbit, and doing so, felt a huge surge or relief. My problem was I was stressing myself out over the step count.
Monstrous Love from A to Z
I get it. If the goal is set too high, measurement can be demotivating.