How we use our time.
Structuring time is so common a thing for us as humans living in a modern western that we barely pause to think what an artificial construct it is. Our time is divided into measurable segments. Seconds are gathered into minutes, minutes into hours, hours into days, days into weeks and so forth.
The cross cultural and cross historical evidence is that humans do this. for sure we do it differently according to circumstances. If we were born in a different culture or a different era the rhythm of time would be marked differently – a day by the coming and going of the light, the moon or the tide, a year by the coming and going of the seasons, the decades by the growth and change that was observable around us. Seconds and minutes were maybe not measured so much.
There is something in us then that needs structure and this opens the door to the possibility of moving through time. We are born, we develop and grow, we live and then we die. In many ways it is the structuring of time that gives us a sense of forward momentum. Even the idea of growth would not make sense without the concept of time and a means of structuring it.
The time structures give shape to the lives we live as those segments of time get filled with…well with what?
In a modern western culture time is sliced small, and some ways of filling the time are more valued than others and these are values that change with circumstances, age, expectations, culture, beliefs and personal values. In our fast paced modern lives, the minutes count and what we choose to give our attention to in these minutes reflects what motivates us. It is worth pausing and being reflective of how we are filling our small slices of time and how these go to make up the life we are choosing to live.
We bring this desire for structure to our interactions with others too.
Berne suggested six ways in which we structure time, all of which are needed for growth, connection and change both as individuals and in relationships.
Intimacy, rackets and games, activities, pastiming, rituals and withdrawal.
We all need something different to maintain our sense of being OK, and we need different things at different times. We need to spend time with others and time apart, time in intimacy and time just hanging out together passing the time. We need meaningful work and time to play as well as do the normal life stuff of shopping and admin. The balance of these things will be different in different seasons of our lives.
These ways of structuring our time decrease in relational risk from intimacy to withdrawal and also the satisfaction we get from them generally decreases in intensity (though this is not true for everyone). Some of us get a high degree of satisfaction from being alone, others form intense relational contact, some of us from working alongside one another and so on.
What happens then when our lives do not currently allow for the things we need?
How do we balance the need for connection so we do not get socially isolated with the need to recharge the battery?
And what if our life circumstances do not align with our needs?
What if intimacy has been unsafe for us? How then do we proceed?