What Is Your Relationship with Time?

What Is Your Relationship with Time?

The Outlier Sessions

Mario E. Martinez, PsyD

Exploring The Time Enigma

Most of us think of time as something we measure. Clocks and calendars organize our days, yet they tell us little about the way life is actually experienced. The difficulty may not lie in time itself, but in confusing the measure with the phenomenon. Time measures duration. Duration is what we live. Sustainable change begins when we experience our duration through the quality of our lives rather than through the measurement of time.

For many years I have been interested in a different question. Rather than asking how much time we have, I have asked what kind of relationship we have with time itself. That inquiry gradually became an inquiry into duration, for every relationship, commitment, aspiration, disappointment, and anticipation of the future is experienced through duration rather than through the clock that measures it. Once this distinction is recognized, the inquiry changes. Many of the struggles we attribute to a lack of time may actually originate in the way we experience duration. Meaning contextualizes duration, and as duration changes, so do the ways we perceive ourselves, others, and the future.

This immersion explores the implications of that relationship. As experienced duration changes, its consequences become increasingly evident:

• We establish priorities through the interplay between the value referent of self and alterity rather than through the demands of the clock.

• We recognize routines that no longer contribute to the quality of our lives.

• We become more discerning about the people and commitments that support—or work against—our ethical journey.

• We begin to cultivate a life measured less by the ticking of time than by the quality of lived duration.

• We stop using "too busy" as an explanation that obscures the priorities we choose when we measure our lives by time rather than by the quality of our lived duration.

This inquiry has emerged from decades of studying healthy centenarians. They provide a living laboratory for exploring the epistemology of longevity.

Throughout our time together we will examine how experienced duration influences our relationships, our sense of purpose, our health, and our experience of aging. This is not an immersion about managing time. It is an inquiry into living duration.

If I were to begin our exploration with a single question, it would be this:

What is your relationship with time?

The answer may reveal more about your health, your relationships, your commitments, and your future than you have ever imagined.

Because of the limited spaces for these live sessions, registrations are non-refundable. Sessions are not recorded or offered for replay in order to preserve the privacy, presence, and confidentiality of the dialogue.