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Running out the clock works in football to win a game if the scores are squeaky close. Stalling tactics by the leading team uses up the time left to play in the last moments of the 4th quarter and offers them a slight edge. They do this by wasting time; time needed by the other team to score and win the game.
The “running out the clock” feeling is what we do in our own lives when we get trapped in a cycle of stress or anxiety. We get confused, are worried we’ll make the wrong decision and get stuck where we are, leading to even more stress or anxiety. We play it safe but that nagging feeling of things not being right just won’t go away.
Expressions like “running out the clock” are shorthand for a powerful behavior pattern we may not be quite aware we are embracing or doing. Time, what do we do with it? Money is a lot easier to talk about. If you waste a $1 here or there, it may not matter as much. Money, in a simple definition, is something we all attribute value to (paper, gold, sea shells) as a mean of exchange. It gets what we need to live, things we cannot produce ourselves.
Wasting money is after all, just wasting money. Sure, there are consequences, but we’re talking about running out our clock, not economic choices. Time is different. Once it is gone it is gone forever, it is history. No amount of money or effort will get you back one second of time in your life.
We intuitively know this fact and don’t like it. We don’t like wasting time; we don’t like the causes that lead us to run out our own clock. It becomes a cycle, a habit and we feel trapped. We want it to be different but don’t have the tools to make the corrections in our own lives that are needed to experience joy and peace in this life.
This is why so many turn to the teachings of Shin Buddhism. For most, it is as simple as deciding to read a book on Shin or attend a service, or put into practice one of the teachings. For others the path is more complex. Their religious background may have taught them there are severe consequences to their ‘eternal soul’ if they explore outside their own faith. Or there may be a sense of loyalty to family and heritage. Another may be the suspicion of all things that sound like a religion.
But after a while, after being fed up enough with the way things are in one’s life, the non-judgmental teachings of Shin is a path many come to. This is a path that has no judgment of you, a path of compassion and wisdom that embraces each and every one of us, just as we are.
Once we “get” the teachings, life becomes easier. Not easier in the sense of the physical reality of the world, but easier in the sense of the inner world we each live in. The “running out the clock” feeling is no longer the cycle of stress/anxiety leading to wasting time and back to more stress because of it.
Shin liberates our thinking. It liberates us. This is the liberation that frees us from running out our own clocks with the feeling that we are wasting time. It frees us to live wiser and with more compassion using all the minutes of our life and using them more fully, even if it is just doing nothing.
Namo Amida Butsu.
In Gassho,
Rev. Anita
rev.anita.cbt@outlook.com
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