Each Wednesday the kids all have a late afternoon ceramics class and Ania and I get a chance to have a drink at a local bar together with the day behind us, the sun setting and an evening breeze on the rise. Preferably we sit outside if the weather accommodates with Palermo Soho bustling around. We typically discuss the events of the day, reflect on our trip and/or leisurely cover off other topics. We both look forward to it and with no where else to go and nothing else to do the conversation can evolve and flow in its own meandering way. Ironically, in order to get to this place where we have nowhere to be and nothing to do, we’ve had to plan it into our schedule and put it on the calendar.

Looking back, as we planned this trip, we put most of the emphasis on the activities and hobbies we’ll take on with our time and the adventures we’ll have. Now that we’ve been here for a few months, I’ve realized that there is a broader theme that has emerged beyond just what we do with our time but how we think about time. In our busy lives time is something to be filled and used with action. But here I’ve been asking myself: Is there an opportunity to approach time differently, create more enhanced experiences and get more depth into everything we do? Rather than just fill time, can use it to actually live, think and experience our world differently?

Settling in here in Buenos Aires, each day it has become more evident how trained we have been in time management and how focused we are in optimizing our lives on a daily basis. As a busy person, when time becomes available, we’ve always felt the pressure to use it. With a job, young kids and a busy life, you often think about those things you could be doing if you had more time so you don’t want to waste it when it is there. When we arrived here, suddenly each day had big open blocks that were begging to be filled. As a painter looks at an empty canvas, we felt the burden of needing to paint a masterpiece. Without items on the calendar, we woke up each day feeling the weight of this open schedule. We know this year is precious, which created ongoing pressure to make it perfect and not waste these valuable hours that we now have available.  

With this in mind, once we settled in and completed our main errands of apartment search, school and other logistics, we immediately jumped into scheduling hobbies and planning activities and trips. Conveniently for our trained minds, it was like adding projects and meetings to the day. Instead of commutes, meetings and work execution, you sub in gym, classes, hobby, research, planning, etc. It made sense and felt familiar. As we got our schedules set up, the opportunity to follow a plan was easy and took uncertainty out of our lives. We felt productive and accomplished with each day.

As the weeks have continued, this blanket of security has begun to feel like more of a diversion than a true usage of what we have in front of us. Just filling the time with other activities than our previous life appears to be hiding a much greater opportunity to utilize the value of the free time that we now have. I’ve begun to sense this possibility in recent days, under the surface, a mirage just out of our reach. I have fleeting moments of completely forgetting what time of day it is, feeling fully engaged in something I am doing that previously I wouldn’t have allowed for myself to indulge in. It is feeling that I recall from my younger days while traveling in between jobs or school, pre kids, pre real responsibility and true adult life. What I’ve begun to ask myself is how do I continue to draw this out while here and bring this feeling into every day and everything that I do. It feels that there is so much out there in terms of depth that we have yet to really embrace beyond just engaging with new activities and plans.

It will not be easy, but in shedding the burden of time optimization, my hope is that we can go deeper into everything we do. We need to figure out how to make the mental shift away from planning each day with the goal of accomplishment. We must let our minds and days roam more freely with greater engagement in the moment, knowing that we’ve created this time for ourselves and it is now luxury to indulge. We can then uncover a more full understanding of the world around us as well our relationships and all of our actions. That is the final piece of what I am searching for in this trip, a deeper level of observation, of learning and of understanding. I think this will enrich not only this year but the rest of our lives.