Day 6: Divine Time
In the last couple of days, two people have asked, “What gives me satisfaction in my work?”
It seemed serendipitous because neither of them know the other. Apparently, I’m supposed to be thinking about the answer to that question. Saying, “Paycheck” seems a little like saying “Fine” when someone asks you how you are. It’s expected. It’s perfunctory. It doesn’t really get to the meat of anything.
There’s a big, grand answer on the tip of my tongue; I just can’t get to it yet. But while my brain is working on The Answer, something small popped up and suggested that at least part of the answer might be found in something I started doing lately: returning to the activities that I’ve enjoyed in the past like writing, taking photos, working on videos, hanging out in coffee shops, and meeting with friends for lunch. Why? Simply because those activities lead to “divine time.”
When you sit down to something, and the next thing you know, four or six or nine hours have passed… and you didn’t even know it? That’s divine time. It’s when you forget everything around you by getting caught up in the pleasure, the joy of what you’re doing that you don’t even think to look at a clock. It’s when the pressure of time disappears and the activity alone rises to the surface.
I would venture to say, most people in the workplace today are not working at the kinds of things that involve divine time. They know exactly when their lunch is, when they need to return from lunch, how much longer they have to work from lunch until when they can leave. And in that last half hour of work? They watch every minute go by with anticipation.
In just the few days I’ve spent at this, I have no idea what time it is. It’s peaceful. The day just unfolds. A little of this. A little of that. A plan for this. Working on that. It puts a smile on my face. I think that smile helps me recognize the importance of this piece of information. I don’t know if divine time is The Answer. But I suspect that it plays a significant part in it.
Courtesy Nickolas Muray, the George Eastman House Collection
