Orientation to Time

I think often about time.

I reflect on the past.
I try to plan for the future.
I do my best to stay grounded on my own two feet in the flexible immediacy of the present.

I am, however,  a much better improvisor by nature than I am a planner or reflector (though I work really hard to improve in both areas).
I find comfort in being able to know, in the moment, that I can read people's expressions and gauge how they feel. I can react and respond accordingly and there is no guessing or overanalyzing involved. Living in the present keeps my anxieties about what's happened in the past at bay and I can't catastrophize about the future.

I am also acutely aware of the passage of time through my own children's growth and experience as well as my reflections and attempts at growing myself, continuing to be a student of my own life.

Recently, though, I have become inspired by the notion of our individual orientations to time. Specifically, the idea that each of us orients our understanding, our consciousness, our actions, according to time. And we do so differently.

Some people center themselves and find comfort in the past.
Some people center themselves and find comfort in the present.
Some people center themselves and find comfort in the future.

I asked my students today to write about their own orientations to time because I was curious to hear them discuss the topic with one another. I genuinely wanted to understand them better and to see how they would discuss notions of goal-setting, reflection, anxiety, and the navigation of their days. They are teenagers and I want to better understand them.

But the conversation led us somewhere I couldn't have predicted, too. It led us to discuss the nature of "paradigm shifts."

The term paradigm shifts originally referred to a change in our understanding of a scientific theory. But in listening to my students as they engaged in a seminar-style conversation, I heard them build on one another's ideas. I watched their grasp of the relationship between patterns and shifts in thinking and understanding develop as they spoke and shared ideas.

Finally, they came to the resolution that a paradigm shift--one of those moments that causes us to reflect in such a way that we say, "this is a moment that changed my life--my thinking--forever"--actually requires us to dwell in all three mind frames of time simultaneously.

To experience a paradigm shift, they argued,

Requires us to reflect (past)
Requires us to be courageous (present)
Requires us to imagine and establish a vision (future)


And then, of course, there is a leap of faith involved.

Some students called it an epiphany. Others liked the word Hallelujah. Others still talked about Eureka moments.

I loved listening to them discuss their own anxieties about dwelling on the past, or planning for the future, or knowing how to interact with the fast-moving decisions of the present.

For me, it was a moment in which I experienced my own paradigm shift about what it really means to study my students. To endeavor to understand them fully.

I am running out of time with them, but I am also gaining the opportunity to share space in such a way that we can dwell equally in the past, the present, and the future.

Today was a moment that feels--and perhaps I'm exaggerating here--like it could change everything.

It reminds me of the second half of a poem, written by Charlie Daniels as he traveled to the funeral of Ronnie Van Zant. When I think about this poem I don't only associate it with death, but with life as well.

"...So say it loud and let it ring,
We are all a part of everything.
The future, present, and the past,
Fly on proud bird you're free at last."


I think paradigm shifts should feel that way, too. They're part of the future, the present, and the past...and by leaning into the leaps of faith and by embracing our own "Eurekas!" and "Ah-has!" we can free ourselves.