Time Doesn’t Exist, and Neither Do The Expectations That Your Family Hold for You

Graduate high school… go to college… graduate top of class… get a nice out of school… find a nice (opposite sex) partner… and settle down to have kids.

It’s the dream… right?

Well it sure as hell seems like it’s got to be with how much society and our families want us to experience it. The questions every time we visit our hometowns get harder and harder to answer honestly without some weird response. Ever heard one of these? Or something close to it?

How does a nice girl like yourself not have a boyfriend?

Well grandma, probably because they sense the ~gay~ in me

You and your partner have been dating for a couple of years, who’s gonna be the one to propose?!

We don’t even know if we want to ever get married?!

When are you going to give your mother a grand baby?

… I don’t even want kids?

Where are you going to grad school after college?

Actually… I’m working on starting my own business out of college

Where are you going to college after high school?

Actually…I’m not.. I’m going to trade school

People don’t like to hear that you have a different idea for your life. In return you may get questioning looks and judgmental tones. There are so many more people who are more comfortable staying within the narrative that society laid out for them than they are curious about who they could be otherwise.

• Grandparents staying in toxic relationships out of respect for traditional values
• Parents drowning their energy & joy in jobs they aren’t passionate about just for the paycheck
• Cousins too afraid to explore their true identity & instead floating in the popular crowd

But- you’re already pushing through that mold. Let me tell you that there is plenty of space for you, no matter what shape you take. Even if you shift away from the story that you were told was yours, it’s okay. Because you have the right to write your own story.

• Curious about dating someone the same gender? Look into it, find someone else who is too.
• Don’t quite feel like a girl or a guy? There are more gender identities out there than the general binary of woman & man, feel free to explore.
• Think dating one person is too restrictive? Feel like you want different sorts of relationships with different people? Theres a word for that- polyamory.

Life was not always how it is now, people cycling through institution to institution until they get sucked into the role carved for them in the capitalist machine. Before people worked in factories- they worked on farms.

The expectation for workers shifted from working with the cycles of harvest and seasons, to working a consistent 9–5 every day.

The way that workers interacted with their bodies, their families, and themselves shifted drastically. Instead of living at will to the natural rhythm of life, people began to live in sync with “time.”

Point being, as things shift over the course of many years we tend to forget the history behind some ideas. We sometimes take certain things as absolutes.

For instance, the ridiculous idea that pink is a color for girls and blue is for boys is something that people in the US are still trying to get out of their mind. In US history and in the history of several other countries, not only has pink been a color specifically worn by boys but it is also sometimes a color that directly represents masculinity.

These facts can be forgotten and the norm of the day can be accepted easily with no question.

The concept of “time” has not been around for nearly as long as humans have lived. Even though we live our lives all in accordance with our age and the right timing of things- this is something that we go along with without questioning. It’s only when someone doesn’t fit in this new mold that people begin to question it.

Time and everything we use to keep track of it and represent it (e.g. calendars, time zones, watches, etc.) are what the sociologist Evitar Zerubavel calls ‘hidden rhythms,’ they’re pieces that represent time in a way that seems natural to the people that it privileges. (Freeman, p. 3).

In other words, if the way things are now work for you and help you get ahead, you aren’t going to think anything of it. Whereas if the timely structured way that we live is difficult for you to cope with, you will not be comfortable and will question it more often.

For instance, for many neurodivergent people, like autistics or those w/ ADHD, the idea of needing to regulate your body for working straight from 9–5 is exhausting in itself. Many people function better through short bursts of work and break, something often not offered in the job world.

This power that lives within society to pressure us to live our lives along a certain timeline in a certain way has a name. Chrononormativity is the idea that certain concepts, like time, are so deeply involved in our daily life by support of the government and society, so that they begin to seem like concrete facts (Freeman, p. 3).

Chrononormativity is what you can blame for the pain you’ve endured while trying to carve your own path in life. It is also the concept that you can work to combat through realizing the truth that you have freedom to live life in the timing you desire.

What is it that is on your mind that you are “supposed” to be doing now?

Graduating college?

Remember that college is a very new “norm” in society, there are plenty of things you can passionately pursue without going to college.

Getting married?

For one, you are inherently enough on your own. Secondly, marriage is a legal and social construct built to control people and their access to supporting one another.

Having a baby?

IF you want them, there is no rush to have children, doing it only if/when you are ready will make life better for everyone.

Point is- I bet there is something in your life that you are being told it is time to do, and I want you to remember that you can always look back into history for the refresher that it is never “time” to do anything.

If we acknowledge the system that is hurting us by staring it in the face and then kicking it off into the distance, we have taken back so much of our power to live.

You can do it too.

Now that you’ve heard that, what do you want to do?

Knowing that your life is yours to experience in the timing that you’re comfortable with, what do you really want to do?