239: What is Time?

So often our lives are ruled by 'clock time' - we're counting off how long there is to get something done, or we're aiming for a time-bound goal, or we're measuring time wasted or time used productively. But although this is the dominant way of understanding time for many of us, it is only one way of relating to the flow of things. What if, instead of filling time with work or play, we turned things around and allowed time to flow into our activity? And what if instead of trying to secure ourselves against an unpredictable future, we took up a playfulness with the unfolding of time itself?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about living into our lives as an infinite unfolding, rather than a finite game. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self programme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon, and to our year-long Professional Coaching Course which begins in June 2022

Turning Towards Life is hosted by Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.

Here's our source for this week:

What Is Time?

There are two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play…

For an infinite player there is no such thing as an hour of time. There can be an hour of love, or a day of grieving, or a season of learning, or a period of labour.

An infinite player does not begin working for the purpose of filling up a period of time with work, but for the purpose of filling work with time. Work is not a way of passing time but engendering possibility. Work is not a way of arriving at a desired present and securing it against an unpredictable future but of moving towards a future that itself has a future.

[So] infinite players cannot say how much they have completed in their work or love or quarrelling, but only that much remains incomplete in it. They are not concerned to determine when it is over, but only what comes from it…

A finite player puts play into time.

An infinite player puts time into play.

James Carse, from ‘Finite and Infinite Games’

Photo by Joe Pregadio on Unsplash