3 Ways of Experiencing Time

Why don’t we talk about our experience of time more? I’ve found it useful to think about the three main ways I experience time (of course there are infinite ways).

Linear Time

Linear time is rational, factual, and very useful. It’s how we organize our society so most of us are very familiar with it. Time is seen as a straight line.

I didn’t understand how to work towards goals before I started using a planner and tracking time in a linear way. I recorded exactly how I spent my time. When I did this I found it empowering. Suddenly I was making progress where I’d been unable to before.

When life is going well I feel pretty great about linear time. I feel I’m able to influence things, achieve goals, and change what I don’t like. Linear time makes sense.

Spiral Time

Spiral time doesn’t make sense. It comes with big moments of loss, of love, or sometimes just confusion. It is changes beyond our control. The COVID pandemic has been an experience of spiral time for myself and many others. For the last 21 months I’ve spent an average of 15 hours a day in my bedroom between working from home and sleeping. I nursed my first child in that room.

Birth is our first spiral experience. We must physically turn and turn again to emerge into the oxygen and take our first breath. Death is also a spiral, as those who have lost someone know. But spiral time is more than birth and death.

Spiral time is love. It is also hate. It can be karma, if we believe in karma. It can be the shit hitting the fan, if we believe in the shit hitting the fan. We’re not in control of spiral time; we’re pulled into it and must go along for the ride, however long it lasts.

Cyclical Time

Cycles are everywhere in the natural world. We see this in the seasons and some of us feel it with the shift in weather. Astronomy shows us the planets of our solar system move in cycles. These planetary cycles were the basis for the first calendars and can still be heard in the names of our months and days.

Astrology helped me identify cycles in my emotional and spiritual life. When I found astrology I was deep in confusion — experiencing spiral time — and it brought me the perspective of cycles. What had felt like a static spiral was part of a larger cycle. I was empowered by learning this language to describe how time felt.

Using the cycles of nature as metaphors to make sense of our experiences can be deeply healing. I believe astrology is more than this, but when I found astrology as a writer and healer this was my way in.

How do you experience time?