With several deadlines approaching and a lecture recording ahead, I find myself thinking less about busyness and more about time itself. We often speak of “having” or “losing” time, as if it were something that could be stored or reclaimed. But perhaps time is never empty to begin with.
Last week was taken up by rehearsal presentations, a CPC session, and a research meeting. For the moment, nothing physically binds my schedule, and that brings a certain relief.
Yet three deadlines await me in early March. Beneath the surface calm, the current is already moving quickly.
In daily diagnostic work, the time required for a case can be roughly estimated. A slide under the microscope will eventually yield its answer within a predictable span. Writing, however, resists such measurement. Thought has no clear boundary; one never knows how deep it must go before reaching solid ground.
This time I must also record a thirty-minute lecture for online distribution. The duration is fixed, but the rhythm of speech, the pauses, the tone—these reveal themselves only when spoken aloud. Time, though equal in length, stretches and contracts depending on how it is inhabited.
There is also a revised manuscript to complete. Revision is not merely correction; it is the act of placing one’s present self beside one’s past words. Tools—especially intelligent ones—may assist. Yet if thinking itself is delegated, the outline of the thinker gradually fades.
How much time should be given to each task? One may try to calculate, but in the end decisions seem to settle within the flow itself.
Come to think of it, time is always filled.
Time spent diagnosing.
Time spent writing.
Time spent traveling.
Time spent sleeping.
Even what appears empty is occupied by something—attention, memory, anticipation, fatigue. Time neither overflows nor runs dry. It cannot be stored for later, nor borrowed in advance.
The only freedom we possess is to decide what shall inhabit the present moment.
Time itself has no density. Density is given by what we place within it—our thought, our action, our intention.
The current moves on, steady and indifferent. Meaning does not arise from time. It arises from how we dwell within it.
Time is already filled.
What remains is to choose its contents.
And so, I return to my work.
