Time

As time passes and Rosh Hashanah brings around new year, I've been thinking about time.
The best aspect of homeschooling, so far, has been slowing down time. There is time to sleep. Time to play. Time to eat slowly. Time to stop and take a look. Time for one more time. In her Exploring Unschooling podcast, Pam Laricchia says one of the greatest gifts of unschooling is time. That rings true to me.


The imaginative play between my kids has changed noticeably since we began homeschooling. It's so rich and shapes so many of our activities. I'm convinced it's a result of the extra time.

I've been trying to change my relationship to time, too. I've begun meditating. I have no longer-term plan as part of this decision to homeschool, and I need help focusing on the moments instead of worrying about what comes next. My kids are good at that.

I listened this past week to a beautiful podcast interview of the late Irish poet John O'Donohue on On Being, and I stopped it in the middle to write this down:

One of the huge difficulties in modern life is the way time has become the enemy.... Stress is a perverted relationship to tiime, so that rather than being a subject of your own time, you have become its target and victim.

In the new year, I'm setting the intention to be the subject of my own time.