Carl Jung and the 4th Dimension of Time

tl;dr: Time marches on and through. The enemy of time lies within each of us.

“What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me; and that I stands in need of the aims of my own kindness, that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved– what then?

Carl Jung

I have a few of the Dailypedia apps and I cycle through them. Today was Carl Jung and the quote above was featured.

It resonated.

Not just because of its personal relevance, which I’ll get to in a second, but because it seemed to speak so clearly to many of the issues that the world is facing today.

So much of what is happening now, at least from my perspective, on social media, in the MSM, and on the streets is the envisioning of the “other” as the enemy.

That’s certainly less cognitive effort and can feel better in the short term as we bask in the fact that “they” are responsible for our problems and shortcomings.

That’s like eating a container of ice cream while cheating on the diet and blaming Haagen-Dazs for the fact that they have great packaging and a lot of chocolate.

Time

I’ve hit on the topic on time more than once recently. First in When Sun Tzu, Peter Drucker, and Andy Grove have coffee, then in “respect for time”, and finally in “I’m a Hypocrite.”

The challenge with all of these approaches is that they are all about my effort to “control” time.

Time, like nature, ultimately can’t be controlled.

For thousands of year, we’ve sought to dominate nature and while that has helped us make unimaginable progress in terms of technology and standard of living, it has come at an unimaginable cost to the environment and many people.

For hundreds of years, since the clock was invented in the 14th century, we’ve sought to dominate time. But it was the invention of time zones by Sandford Fleming (shout out to Canada) that supercharged our efforts to dominate time.

Today, we set so many of the rules of our lives by the time.

Every 10 minutes for a Bitcoin block. April 15th (usually) for taxes. Coffee at 8am.

Yet, it is time that is the ultimate rule of life.

The 4th Dimension.

Never-Ending Stream of Time

I can’t remember where the moment of visualized realization of time hit me. I’ll name drop some books that I think may have been the source, but right now, I can’t find the quote.

It was either in Pema Ch?dr?n’s book, Practicing Peace in Times of War. Aryeh Kaplan’s Jewish Meditation, or Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen. It doesn’t really matter, but it was through one of them (or probably all) that I came to see time in a different light.

Imagine you are standing still on an empty street. It’s evening, quiet, and there are no cars. Maybe there’s a hum of an AC or some crickets. A few streetlights. It feels like all is still in the world. Plus, when you add in the humidity of DC, it feels sticky and still.

You’re not aware of time. You’re just there, appreciating the stillness of the moment.

Yet, every second, you, I, we are actually moving. Coming up the street to meet us, like a series of invisible panes of glass that rapidly follow one after another is time.

Time passes through us and, gradually over time, changes us from the person we were to the person we are, on the road to the person we are meant to become.

Time is an invisible 4th dimension that goes through our bodies like gamma rays would do and changes us.

We all see it in the mirror or old pictures, but we don’t see it as it is happening, usually.

Resisting Time

And this brings me back to Jung’s quote.

I love the reframing from the outward enemy to the inward enemy overall. However, I took it and applied it to the concept of time.

Covid has made all of us much more aware of our own mortality and it’s been interesting for me to observe (not scientifically) how various people respond to it.

Some accept, some resist.

Time is the same way. We can accept the inevitable aging or we can resist and, like many on Twitter that I follow, insist that aging is not inevitable.

Maybe there’s a way to do that, I wouldn’t put anything out of the question, but I think that confronting the inevitability of time is part of the human condition.

The “enemy” I must confront when it comes to time is my own resistance about what happens to me-my body, brain, etc. as time passes through incessantly.

Well, it does cease at some point.

And that’s the thing I think I am getting at here.

We can agonize that “we don’t have enough time” or “it’s taking too much time” but that’s an external focused view, the Haagen Dazs of time management.

Instead, look down the street and ask yourself, “how many more time panes will I go through before it’s over?”

Then, ask yourself, “given that, where should I spend my time?”

The enemy within us is the voice that says “you don’t have to worry about X now” or “it’s ok to do Y now because you have the time.”

You don’t have the time.

Time has you.