Welcome! I’m so very glad to be here, but more importantly, I’m glad you are here. We are all familiar with the many exciting endeavors The City Repair Project has underway [see the articles in this issue] but the vein of gold in City Repair is the relationships the projects give rise to and that’s why we’re here tonight, to be together. Thank you for coming.

I’ve been asked to speak briefly on the topic of "taking back your time." I am, in fact, a Take Back Your Time Day activist, and I hope to make you one too. Some of your might already have made a commitment to holding onto as much time as you can; others may be thinking they’d like to make this a priority, but aren’t sure how. I hope I have something to say to folks in both these camps, but I won’t talk for long, for tonight is meant for music, dance and time to revel in the T-Whale, the T-Horse, the T-Pony and the T-Bike. These wonderful vehicles of transformation are together in one place for the very first time. They are a remarkable convergence of place waiting for your enjoyment to make them complete.

I’d like to begin with a recipe for happiness: pleasure plus engagement plus meaning. In the last couple of decades social scientists have conducted cross-cultural studies of "subjective well being" in countries in every continent and compared them to the USA. These studies demonstrate that the people in many countries that have much less purchasing power than we do report being almost as happy as we are. Then they began to look for reasons why that might be the case.

Many point to our traditional cultural myth of the "rugged individualist" and the "self made person" as anchors that once held us steady in times of frontier expansion but are now dragging us down.

According to some experts, the breakdown of close-knit communities and the hectic demands of technology have resulted in social disconnection and insulated life styles. Excessive consumption and the frenetic pace of technology push our individual activity levels up and our well being down. The use of anti-depressant medication has sky-rocketed, going from 5 billion dollars spent per year to 26 billion in the last five years. Diseases caused by over-eating and inactivity are on the rise.

In addition, we, as Americans, have participated in the systematic reduction of the time we have outside of work by actively or passively permitting the expansion of work and the weakening of worker protections. We are working harder for less money and with less social support. It was the specific documentation of this process by Juliet Schor, a Harvard economics instructor at the time, that activated my involvement in social policy work. In The Over-Worked American, she demonstrated that we have lost over 40 percent of our free time as workers since 1970.

Reading "he Over-Worked American" [by Juliet Schor] was a revelation for me. I graduated from high school in 1970. During the span of my working life, vacation pay, holiday pay and overtime pay benefits have been dramatically reduced. At the same time, our actual living wage has remained flat. I had sensed these changes, but tended to think that my struggle was "my problem." As a therapist, I realized I had to more than just teach my clients relaxation techniques because their struggles weren’t just "their problem" either. We have to take action to create a different kind of life. But what action?

As communities erode and the primacy of the individual elevates, the collective wisdom of the commons is being lost. We’re forgetting how to live well, and with one another. It’s a spiritual crisis of sorts, one organized around the issue of time, for we’re too busy to be together

Bill McKibben, the noted thinker on sustainability, maintains that a society centered on the individual will have a hard time adapting to the social, political, economic and ecological changes ahead as we acknowledge limits to our resources.

The solution, according to McKibben and many others, lies in our ability as communities, as regions, to come to a vision of our collective lives that inspires us, that results in a "net increase in satisfaction."

Fifty years ago we consumed one-third as much we do now per capita and three-quarters of us claimed to be "very satisfied" with our lives. Despite a tripling of our rate of consumption, today less than a third of us report being "very satisfied" with our lives.

Tonight is about knowing the pleasure of simple things not bought: our rapport of sharing, our vital engagement and our just plain fun for the heck of it.

Before we get started, I’d like to talk to you about ways to expand time to be together, and ways to enhance our sense of pleasure and engagement and meaning when we do so.

The first thing I want to share is a movement I’m a part of: Take Back Your Time Day. It’s a grassroots social policy change effort targeting over-work and time poverty in America.

The goal of Take Back Your Time Day is to focus attention on the social policy and lifestyle conditions that produce time poverty and on implementing the possible solutions.

For me, one of the spiritual dimensions of time is the recognition of the narrative that is our self story unfolding within the context of other lives and the conscious weaving together of our shared stories as they transition from beginning to middle to end, then back to the beginning again.

Sometimes the lives we co-exist with cannot speak for themselves, like the salmon swimming up rivers, the child who toils somewhere as a slave, or the disappearing Artic permafrost, but we can speak for them in the choices we make.

It takes time to compose your story and tell it the way you want, but that’s how we create our life’s meaning and it’s worth every minute.

Lifestyle choices can foster a spiritual element or collude in its withering away. The T-Whale, that delightful gathering place splashing about in the park just outside, invites you to take the time to pay attention to how you feel right now. Be mindful of this moment, for it will pass quickly.

Time can transform intimate relationships, the ones we share with good friends, lovers, spouses, children and parents. Current research in psychoneurobiology tells us that when we are attuned to another person, connecting with deep trust and mutual recognition, our very biology is altered, our brains mirror the processes through which we each perceive and engage with the other.

We actually have "mirror neurons" in our brains that physically resonate with the brain of another by firing in unison when we engaged in the emotional resonance created by caring, empathic connection.

When you look at me with acceptance and interest, and speak to me in a way that opens dialogue, I look back at you with an emerging sense of trust and recognize you more fully. Then, as I look closely at you and align myself with your intention to build trust, you, in turn, open up too. Our perceptual and emotional brains begin operating in synch, generating a pulsing biological neurological fireworks pattern in our brains through which each one alters the other as we follow one another’s lead.

Throughout our lifetime, our neural synaptic connections grow as our trust-building and empathy-sharing knowledge increases. We literally take one another in and are transformed by the process.

The promise of the T-Howes, of the comfy nesting benches, of the village square is the chance to build trust and "take one another in." On opening night, Jenny Leis called on us to be the villagers, to let the spirit of the village radiate outward from our convergence. We’re not just in the same room together, we’re shaping and changing one another with the force of our mutual regard and the power of the story we’re telling together.

Isn’t it turning out to be a great story??

Village life returns time to us with big dividends. The first is happiness, immediate and heartfelt. Happy time is time well spent.

You can’t help but notice the big smiles on people’s faces when they work on City Repair projects. They are loving being together, creating something beautiful and purposeful. In addition to winding up with a cool gathering place or warming bench or bread oven, their endeavors support sustainability by using alternative materials that don’t deplete the planet or re-cycled materials that would otherwise choke landfills.

The conservation of resources is another time dividend. The first T-Hows was built with old window frames that had been stacked against a wall for years. A little imagination and a little more work gave life to a glittering neighbor magnet. Applying creativity to the materials we have at hand saves the time we’d otherwise use to earn the money to buy new stuff. Of course, using our creativity while saving time and money makes us really happy too.

The use of cob and other sustainable materials in gateways, benches and walls provide form, function and beauty with a small ecological footprint, creating places for kids to grow up in that don’t borrow against their future.

A third time dividend of the village lifestyle is wisdom. When older folk sitting around the village square are asked to convey some of the insight they’ve collected through years of surviving and thriving, the younger ones can avoid wasting time making the same mistakes all over again. Better decisions can be made when understanding is deepened and broadened beyond the restrictions of a single or a short-term perspective. When we receive collective wisdom, our own time and energy is protected and community health is supported in the process.

Lastly, I’d like to emphasize the impact of strong, healthy relationships as a major time saver. When neighbors pool their tools and share their skills, their lives are enriched by on-going relationships built on trust, they don’t spend money on redundant goods and services, non-renewable materials are conserved, precious time for rest and relaxation is captured by reducing the burden of home and land management and they weave together a shared story of the place they call home while they care for it.

Our stress levels go down and our well being goes up as we knit together connection and direct our life energy with the advantage of collective support. That’s why people in Ireland, Brazil and Argentina say they are just about happy as we are, even though their material wealth is considerably less.

If you’re inclined towards social and political action, join me in celebrating Take Back Your Time Day and promoting social policy legislation that will protect our right to time. Legislative action to provide guaranteed minimum vacations that are portable from one job to another and legislation to implement paid family leave time, not unpaid as we currently have, are examples of policy changes that will make a difference.
Spread the word about the recipe for happiness: pleasure plus engagement plus meaning. Remember, it’s not enough to talk about what we want. Take action to make your Village values real beyond the piazza, for we have to work together to bring about the better life we envision, and there is much to do.

In closing I’d like to quote Bill McKibben twice:

"The most important work to be done towards sustainability right now is to help people realize that they are part of something larger than themselves — that their actions affect the environmental, economic, and social welfare of others."

And:

"The only way to subvert people is to have more fun than they do."

Be subversive. Enjoy this evening. Be in joy. We have a full moon shining above, three live bands to cut loose with and lots of fabulous desserts to savor while drinking in the warmth of the tea and the beauty of the T-Whale, the T-Horse, the T-Pony and the T-Bike.

Kathleen Walsh is a licensed psychotherapist and wellness consultant in Portland, Oregon (www.AchievingChange.com). She is an activist promoting the principles of Take Back Your Time Day and The City Repair Project. She invites you to learn more about these exciting, important grassroots movements by logging onto www.timeday.org and www.cityrepair.org and to consider attending this summer’s TBYT Day conference in Seattle, WA, August 4th through the 7th.



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