Time Means Nothing at All

Time has a way of slipping through our fingers. Looking back, we ask where it has gone. Of course, time means nothing at all.

A woman who lived with us for several years had an old cassette with a song by that title. It was so long ago I don’t honestly know who did that or what the rest of the words are in her version, but I found a powerful song by that title by Lisa Mitchell.

“Time Means Nothing At All” Click on the title to listen, or just read the lyrics.

Do you know that I spend my days,
walking the streets and lanes,
looking through window panes,
in and out of quaint cafes.

Me and myself,
we have an ongoing war,
there is an ongoing love affair,
giving up, keeping score.

Well I hope that we find each other,
before I lose myself,
I hope that you get to me,
before my own world does.

See, me and myself,
we have an ongoing war,
there is an ongoing love affair,
giving up, keeping score.

And time means nothing at all,
our minds are stronger than we give them credit for,
Distance means nothing at all.

Do you know that I spend my days,
walking the streets and lanes,
looking through window panes,
in and out of quaint cafes.

Me and myself,
we have an ongoing war,
there is an ongoing love affair,
giving up, keeping score.

Well I hope that we find each other,
before I lose myself,
I hope that you get to me,
before my own world does.

See, me and myself,
we have an ongoing war,
there is an ongoing love affair,
giving up, keeping score.

And time means nothing at all,
our minds are stronger than we give them credit for,
Distance means nothing at all.

Most interesting to me is the timing of my remembering this. Last evening a friend shared the work of Ross Rosenberg: Narcissism, Co-dependence, and the Self-love Deficit Disorder. Wow…. Rosenberg has established new definitions of some challenging personality problems.

For example, “Self-love Deficit Disorder” is his term for co-dependency. You can appreciate that these issues are on continuum. As you learn in Psychology 101, it is easy to see yourself in the descriptions of the pathology wherever you are on his “continuum of self” theory. Rosenberg addresses a pathological loneliness that fuels a pull to relationships that don’t work but are difficult to extricate yourself from. In one interview, he uses a term I had never heard of, Gaslighting.

Gaslighting is best understood in the 1944 film of that name starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman. Gaslighting is a manipulative, conscious, malicious covert strategy which convinces another they have a problem that does not truly exist.

We can all benefit from an awareness of who and how we really are. Non-pathological levels of narcissism and co-dependency exist in each of us and being able to see what triggers us is crucial to being genuinely healthy. We can identify real problems we have had relating and choose to be self-loving enough to navigate our relationships honestly and skillfully.

We all have a history, and most of us were gaslit, but when it comes to developing true self-love time means nothing at all…