Time to Read
“But I soon came to feel that teaching these sensitive young souls Latin and mathematics was cheating them of something far more essential — what they needed wasn’t dry information but hope, the kind that comes from being transported into a dream-world of possibility.”
— Helen Fagin, in The Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader
It’s a chilly weekend morning. I’m standing by the side of a huge lake along with tens of other people, all rubbing their hands together to keep themselves warm. The water looks freezing and turbulent as if to throw us back on land if we were to venture out to take a dip. We’re all waiting for the organizers to blow a whistle to start the first leg of the triathlon. The shot’s fired and everybody starts jumping into the lake like a herd of lemmings out to commit suicide(it’s a myth, they apparently don’t actually do it). A punch here, a kick there and the unforgiving water. Bruised and exhausted, I somehow make it to the other end to see my bike ready to go. I take off my swim clothes, put on my biking outfit and I’m ready to go. The first half of the biking route is all uphill, and that’s where I plan to get ahead of everybody. My quads looking like wooden logs can hardly be contained in the biking shorts. I pedal as fast as I can on the uphill to pass people who beat me in water. At the top, I bring my back closer to the bike and take off in an aerodynamic position. Even with the sunglasses, tears from my eyes due to the headwinds fly backward as if they’re going to pierce through the rider behind. At the finish line, I apply the brakes, jump off the bike and let it ride further a few yards and crash on its own, like a bird with its neck chopped off. I change to running shorts and slowly ramp my speed in the last and final activity, the one that seems most familiar to me — running. Halfway through the race, somebody tells me that I have a shot at winning and by a huge margin. Tears out again but of happiness and joy this time. The last couple hundred feet I almost sprint as though my legs are green. I win the event and I see my parents at the finish line smiling. I sense a feeling of pride in their eyes, which makes me want to cry more.
Such vivid is the recollection of the triathlon that never happened. That’s right. While reading the book Finding Ultra, as I read the account of his feats in Hawaii, I pause for a few minutes and get lost in this imaginary race and I’m winning. I probably will never actually win a triathlon. But that imaginary race was still a very powerful motivator. Three years later, many such thoughts have fueled real and positive changes in me.
I have always felt at peace reading a book in a quiet place. I feel energized and excited to get to places where reading takes me. That feeling of getting inundated with ideas, freeing yourself from the constraints and conditioning of the real-world and letting your mind escape into a world of infinite potential and possibilities, asking yourself big questions and looking for answers within, is hugely inspiring and empowering. In that space and time, you’re neither in auto-pilot nor in the passenger seat. You’re the one in complete control. Making wrong moves there or taking a wrong turn doesn’t come with the judgments and repercussions of the real world. Instead, it comes with a deeper understanding of the consequences and rewards of your choices and helps you navigate the real world better.
But it’s much harder these days to get that lone space and time, harder than it needs to be. The eight or so hours that you spend at work is flooded with frequent and sometimes unnecessary meetings, direct or indirect conversations and breaks. You go home, spend some time with your partner, and eke out some time to read, write and workout. Not only do you have to carve time out for deep work, but you also have to make an extra effort to quell the mental chatter caused by entropy throughout the day. With the open floor plans in offices now, the passive conversations that you become part of just by being there feels like passive smoking to me. You end up bearing the brunt of something that you didn’t consciously choose to be a part of.
While it always is an ongoing battle to make time for things, the process of fighting for it also tells you something about what you value most, the things you consider are worth your time and that clarity eventually forces you to let go of the clutter — physical and mental, literal and metaphorical. So in a way, the fight for time is actually a fight for values, self-awareness, growth, a fight to shape and refine yourself.
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