TROPISM
“Time is being and being time, it is
all one thing, the shining, the seeing, the dark abounding.”
Ursula K. LeGuin
Perhaps I am coining a word when I use
“chronotropism” to refer to a response an individual makes to the
passage of time. The word “tropism” is defined as “the
responsive growth or movement of an organism toward or away from an
external stimulus.” The word is derived from the Greek word for
turn or turning. In biology, there are a number of tropisms related
to how plants respond to the environmental conditions, including
sunshine, water, and even the proximity of other plants and
non-sentient beings (think rocks). At its base is the idea of
process, of adaptation, of resilience. Process and progress.
Chronotropism came to mind as I was
thinking about how our lives are played out within the progress of
time. If we move at all, we are acting in a stream of time. If we
engage in recalling memories, we are within the envelope of time. And
just at this time of year, the last day of one year on the cusp of a
new one, I am thinking about how we express it as the “turn” of a
new year. And it is a tropism in its own way, is it not? Our minds
are turning towards the future and away from the year (actually the
moment) just passing away. We are always in the stream of time,
always turning, always moving in ways that are responses to the
stimuli of life as we live it on a daily basis.
A recent article on the management of
time as it relates to one's organic circadian rhythms also plays into
this consideration of chronotropism. The article was directed at the
young and restless who hold jobs and are developing their lives in
ways that now drift away from older people, such as me. The article
had all the jargon associated with the business/work world. There
were references to productivity and efficiency and maximizing effort.
There were suggestions about timing one's activities to match in some
more harmonious way the rhythms of the body. For instance, it was
suggested that one experiment with the time of day to see how certain
periods allowed for sharper focus for more demanding work and other
periods when such work would constitute mental overload. It is in
these latter periods that one might engage right brain activities or
even participate in some physical activity.
It seems to me that human biology has
its built in circadian rhythms that relate to neurochemical balances
and that these effects will be operative no matter what one's
intentions are to overcome them. But having said that, it is useful
to think about the times of day, the energy stores,
wakefulness/sleepiness, and to make an effort to pace oneself within
those innate biological constraints. After all, the body requires the
miracle of sleep in a variety of manifestations in order to maintain
robust health. This is true no matter how one might shave off hours
from sleep in the hope of becoming more “efficient.” There are
limits to what we can manage by intention alone.
When I think about chronotropism, I
imagine that the tasks of the day, including all uninvited
distractions and interruptions, are the stimuli that cause us to
respond. The definition above states that the stimuli cause movement
or growth in the organism and the metaphor of tropism the way I am
using it also applies to how we respond to the stimuli we experience
in the course of our daily stream of time. I suppose that all stimuli
are not of equal potency for plants responding to their external
forces and that there are some that are, in balance, negative and do
not promote growth. They might, in fact, be detrimental to the
organism's welfare. I think the same is true for humans.
The stimuli that we experience are as
vast and complicated as all of life. We are sensitive to the
pressures of economics, politics, the work place, relationships
inside and outside of the nuclear family, the dynamics of community,
the effects of climate change on how we behave and construct our
homes and cities, for instance. One can name factors in all aspects
of our lives that serve as stimuli for us. Not all of them, of
course, are positive in the sense that we learn from them and make
positive changes in how we understand and move ahead in our lives.
Moving ahead implies growth with the passage of time, just as Darwin
understood evolution to underscore changes in morphology over long
expanses of time. The dynamic of change suggests that only those
responses to stimuli persist because they represent some benefit to
the survival of a species. Along the way to some persistent change in
morphology or behavior patterns there will probably be certain traits
that appear but that are washed out of the system over time.
When I think of the human trajectory
over time I imagine that what we think are permanent changes in our
patterns of life and our relationships to human constructs, like
government or economic systems, will in the long run wash out and
some other changes we can't predict will emerge as the ones that
bring the greatest accommodation and growth for survival of the
species. If one takes this longer view of life and of time, then it
is possible to manage the troubling events of the day in a way that
dials down fear and anxiety. What we think is dramatically affecting
our lives today will lessen and perhaps dissolve altogether over our
a short or longer span of time.
I also think we tend to imagine that
the stimuli that affect us so noticeably and that we think are
stand-alone events are actually manifestations and permutations
themselves of multiple stimuli acting to change their character. For
instance, we isolate such things as stock market gyrations and
political election results as signal events when, in fact, they are
just the swings of the pendulum that have been set in motion by
global markets and socially agreed upon structures of governance,
respectively.
I use the examples of economics and
politics because they are so obviously followed by so many people and
are used to evaluate the health of a society. But, of course, there
are millions of other factors that play into our individual and
communal health. In my meditation courses I introduce the idea of
what I call the wholeness axis. By that I mean the holistic notion of
what it is to be a human being. I tease it apart to work with how
body, mind, and spirit contribute to an integration of parts to the
whole. In the realm of chronotropism there might be stimuli directed
at only the body or only the mind, or spirit. Yet, the entire
organism responds in various ways to adjust to the stimulus. From the
onset of the stimulus to its being experienced, to the changes that
result from it, there is the passage of time. The stimulus causes
effects and these effects, in turn, cause new and different things to
happen. Time flows on in its natural and unemotional streaming.
When we make an effort to coordinate
our thoughts and activities with our physiological rhythms, we are
engaging our whole self in ways that allow stimuli/responses to
manifest in the dynamics of holistic health. One cannot name a
philosopher or scientist (what was Einstein, after all?), poet or
playwright, dancer, economist, politician, parent, teacher, who has
not dealt in some way with chronotropism in the myriad ways that
human cognition and achievement manifest. Each of us does the same no
matter how our lives are constructed and play out over time. It
affects the babe and the elder, it spans birth to death—and beyond.
When we are attuned to the world around us, we respond. When we
notice how we respond, we can change in conscious ways, in ways that
promote a strong and robust environment in which all of us can
participate. This is the growth part of chronotropism. It is a
tendency to use the stimuli, even the most noxious, in ways that
promote growth. It is one of the paradoxes of our lives that what
seems most troublesome and harmful can be the seed of
growth-promoting change. Humans have this capacity for conscious
choice and to choose that which supports all in a common cause.
I use time wastefully sometimes and
wish to take this turn from a passing year to a new one as an
opportunity to reflect on just how I am in synchrony with the rhythms
of the universe in ways that contribute to my own health and that of
the billions of others on this planet—and for the planet itself.
How much time do we have? How will we spend this most precious
non-renewable resource? Perhaps it is my age that prompts these
thoughts, but perhaps it is just a swing of the pendulum of
consciousness. Over time, may all of us notice the ways in which we
are improving so that we may leave a brighter future to those yet
unborn. Isn't this what time is for?
