Time Out of Time
It was the fever that emptied me out and the orange cone that brought me back to life
Before we begin—just a quick note. I recently made some changes to an earlier piece called The Shape of Things. If you haven’t read it—or feel open to giving it a second look, I’d love to share it with you.
In sixth grade, I entered a speech writing competition.
My topic? The importance of family.
I titled my speech There’s No Place Like Home, taken right out of Dorothy’s mouth at the end of The Wizard of Oz. I explained how her trek through Oz was really a journey inward. How, in the end, she wakes to find that everything she ever longed for was already with her, right there among the people and place she loved. I was earnest. A little awkward. Deeply sincere. I pressed my red-shoed heart into that podium like it was the pulpit of some greater truth.
But there was another speech given that day, one I’ve never forgotten.
It was titled The Wise Use of Time.
The girl who gave it stood with poise and clarity, and laid out a full blueprint for success: wake up early, set measurable goals, avoid distractions, and don’t waste a single hour. Time, she insisted, was your most valuable asset, and it should be budgeted like money, tracked like calories, and used only for things that “move the needle.”
Even at eleven, I remember feeling like she was onto something. She sounded like someone who belonged in the world we were all being groomed to enter. A world of planners, benchmarks, and quarterly reviews.
Lately, that phrase, the wise use of time, has come back again. Not as a regret or rivalry, but as a quiet reckoning.
Because I look around now, in this time of social unraveling and ecological collapse, and I feel it. That ache to do something! That inner pushing to act wisely and urgently… before it’s too late. But in the same breath, I know it was our anxious rush forward that got us here in the first place.
We began measuring minutes instead of meaning. We turned time into something we could waste.
Even our clocks began to whisper warnings: Tempus Fugit - time flies.
And while that phrase once invited contemplation of death, it eventually got absorbed into capitalism’s bloodstream. It became more pressure than poetry.
We turned time into a taskmaster, and wisdom into a race against it. But what if the wise use of time isn’t about managing it at all? What if time, in its truest form, can’t be managed, only met?
Years ago, I had a fever that emptied me out completely. Five days of full system collapse. No food. No sleep. No capacity. On the sixth day, I wobbled into a grocery store, too soon, if I’m honest, but I needed a few things. I moved slowly down the aisles, grabbing only the basics. By the time I got to the checkout line, I could barely hold the weight of my own body.
As I fumbled through my purse, I looked up and locked eyes with the bagger. And something came through his eyes. I can only describe it as pure love. It wasn’t personal. But it was intimate. More intimate than some people I’ve shared decades with. It reached into me in a way I didn’t know was possible.
Time stopped.
Or maybe it dissolved. Melted. Became everything and nothing all at once.
I made it to my car and headed home. A few blocks in, traffic detoured. Orange cones lined the road. And one of them, just a plain, industrial, plastic cone, caught my eye. Not because of the light. Not because of the street.
Just… the cone.
It was doing exactly what it was there to do. Standing in its place. Redirecting traffic. Asking nothing of anyone. And somehow, in that moment, it radiated peace. Not the kind you find in a meditation app or on a retreat. But the kind that comes from belonging exactly where you are, doing what you’re meant to do. I felt it. And I couldn’t stop looking.
When I got home, I made my way out to the backyard, to the little garden sanctuary I’d built for myself. I sat on the perch where I’d sat many times before, but this time it was different.
The birds, God, the birds, they weren’t background noise. They were everywhere. Their voices rose in a layered, sacred cacophony. It wasn’t just sound. It was ceremony. An orchestra of millions, singing me back into the world.
And the green. The green was vibrating. Not metaphorically. Literally shimmering, pulsing, alive. The leaves, the light, the ground itself, everything in motion, like the veil between matter and spirit had thinned.
Nothing was still. Nothing was static. It all moved with presence. With invitation.
And here’s what I’ve come to believe. It wasn’t a random miracle.
It was the fever.
It was those five days of being utterly emptied out, of having no choice but to stop, to soften, to be undone. The kind of stillness we’re usually too scared or too scheduled to choose. I didn’t enter that sacred state by trying harder. I entered it by being forced to let go.
And while I’d never wish that kind of sickness on anyone, and I pray I never go through it again, God, I do wish I could return to that kind of clarity.
The way time folded open like a secret.
The way the world revealed itself as alive, sentient, singing.
It wasn’t about checking something off a list. It was about being changed.
I think about that a lot now. How presence collapses time. How stillness, not speed, is where wisdom lives.
And how, if we’re not careful, we’ll spend our lives trying to use time wisely…only to discover we were measuring the wrong things.
There’s a different kind of time beneath the one we track on clocks and calendars.
It doesn’t fly. It deepens.
It doesn’t count. It calls.
It spirals, loops, and lingers. It opens a doorway right here, in the moment we were about to rush past.
We don’t stop time by grabbing the hands of the clock. We stop time by sinking into the center of it. By arriving so fully in the now that it becomes everything.
This kind of time isn’t productive. It doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet. It won’t win you an award.
But it will tell you how to live.
Not by rushing toward answers, but by listening for what the moment itself asks of you.
That’s the wisdom no calendar can offer.
That’s the wise use of time no one taught us.
Oh, and in case you were wondering…
There were only two of us in that speech competition.
The girl who spoke about The Wise Use of Time…she came in first.
And maybe she was right.
Just not in the way we thought.
Love this one! Time - our enemy or our friend? Will I ever learn to live in this moment vs. counting the times past and future? The few times that I get it right - they are precious. Thanks Megan - for the reminder.
I felt time stand still this week while gazing at the full moon and while peeking into the nest of a new robin, hatched from its egg for hours and then days... And with my grand daughter, just being alive. For 99% of my life, I have measured my time by productivity...until very recently, and the shift feels oh so good.