Reflection by Edgar Cahn
TimeBanking has a way of making random chance feel like destiny – something that should have happened, had not happened, and finally, actually did happen. In a world where we sometimes feel insignificant and powerless to make a difference, TimeBanking becomes a way of saying: I own this moment. I own myself. And I am a cause in motion.
That is the power that time, our time, our slice of eternity, gives us. Every time I go to a Timebank gathering, I find myself meeting someone I never would otherwise have met, talking to people who would otherwise have remained non-existent. Typically, we are with people, face to face, shoulder to shoulder, even touching – but not connecting. Somehow, the TimeBank functions as a form of permission to bridge the invisible divide and a mandate to cross it, to link, to presume that that “other” has something they might want to share, something they might not have talked about – simply because they are coming into safe space where all the invisible beings that inhabit each of our bodies has an invitation to come out, be on display, show how they shine – and be there in a new way so that a stranger can cease to be a stranger.
Random chance, over time, can work magic. Think of the odds against life emerging from rocks and minerals. And then think, as life emerged, the odds against beings with consciousness emerging and evolving into something called human beings
TimeBanking brings that cosmological miracle to life – on the most mundane and daily level. The creation of our planet happened 4-5 billion years ago. If we compressed those billion years by characterizing that whole period as a single day, a 24 hour day, then the evolution of our species would have taken only the last 4 seconds.
Just to be here means we beat the odds. Let’s use Time to celebrate that miracle. Human beings can still evolve.
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