THE TIME TOUCH DILEMMA
As both individuals and as a culture, we have tremendous blind spots when it comes to understanding our behavior and what is REALLY at the bottom of the critical decisions that we make on a daily basis. One of these blind spots has to do with TIME. Our perception of time has radically changed in the past five years. Do you know anyone who has the luxury of free time, or who isn’t stressed, busy, or overloaded with sorting and managing information at the escalating pace of life that accompanies the “frantic future”? If so they are the exception to the rule in our current “time starved” society.
The implications for our changing pace of life are important. From the perspective of lifestyle BALANCE, we give up “touch” when we are immersed in a culture that worships time. Touch refers to how we are “connected” with ourselves and others, let’s call it our ME / WE connection. Research indicates that people pressed for time filter incoming information differently, and a preoccupation with the “time crunch” interferes with our deeper, more empathic forms of human communication. For example, do you take the time to pay attention to that homeless person begging on the street corner or do you look away, speed up your pace, and deny this particular element of reality? In research studies designed to investigate this very issue, time deprivation plays a major role in how people pay attention and filter their incoming information. Here’s the question, if the pace of society continues to escalate as it has in the past, how is this TIME-TOUCH DILEMMA going to effect the way we communicate with our family, friends, work and business relationships? How will it effect the way we structure time for physical fitness and wellness? And how will the “frantic future” continue to erode empathy and intimacy?
