Time and Rhythm

What is time? We wake up at a certain time in the morning, we get dressed, go to work and need to be there at a certain time. We're expected to put in a certain amount of hours to get paid our salary. We get given a certain amount of time to rest, to eat and for some of us time is directly proportional to money. I can't help thinking that we are slaves to this thing called time, this clock that we have created to keep the machine moving.

The problem with time is that it is uniform and it is one measure applied to all people. Nature doesn't have time. Nature has rhythm. There is a difference. Nature is full of rhythm, different rhythms that move in and out of one another. The moon revolves around the earth, the earth around the sun. The tide comes in and it goes out. It's predictable, but not slave to one beat, second after second, minute after minute.

As human beings we try to live outside of nature. We have our houses that protect us from the wind and rain. We have shoes on our feet that protect our feet from the earth. When we sit down we very rarely sit in the sand or on the grass. We nearly always put something between us and the earth.

But our rhythm betrays us. The rhythm we naturally experience reminds us that we are children of the earth. Our heart doesn't beat in time with the clock that we have created. Our breath has it's own rhythm - and responds to our needs, which also vary according to the rhythm of our body.

Sometimes we can be so caught up in the ticking of the clock and the mechanisation of our daily lives that we forget how to see and feel who we really are. We think that our day-to-day life by the clock is real, but it is just an illusion, something we created to help us, but by which we are now enslaved.

Perhaps part of letting go is letting go of time, and finding the rhythm of the earth once again. Dying to that which is already dead and opening our eyes to who we really are.

Letting Go

A big part of drumming 'in the groove' is about letting go. If you try and control the rhythm you slip out of it or the rhythm never seems to have the same life that it has when you let go and allow the rhythm be what it is. Then it has a life of its own.
Humans beings are not very good at letting go. Life is full of things we want to cling to. They may be good experiences that we wish would last forever, or friendships and relationships that we fear will disappear if we let go. So we try to own and control these things. When we do that we restrict them from being driven by the rhythm of life as we try to make them conform to what we imagine them to be.

But it's not only the good experiences we cling to. How many times do we make a mistake, or do something we think is stupid and play it over and over in our heads, trying to re-live it so that somehow we can fix it, but then we find that we can't go back in time and fix it. So we need to learn to let go of these things.

And then there are the things that get done to us. Things that hurt or injure us affect how we see ourselves. And so we hold on to this image of who we are and build a shield around that part of us so that we can't be hurt again. These things are very hard to let go and sometimes you need someone to help you to do that.

What prevents us from letting go? Perhaps it's because we're afraid that if we let go of all these things then nothing will be left behind. It's a fear of losing ourselves - the fear of dying. But as we learn to let go we slowly discover that we haven't lost ourselves. Without all the illusions we cling on to, we find who we really are.

"Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will find it. "