The Timelessness of Being - 15.12.2025
I gave myself the greatest gift.
From November 2024 to November 2025, I traveled around the world—and consciously chose to prioritize the things in my life that truly make me happy. Above all, I chose to get to know myself: without a job, without my familiar surroundings, without social status—without a mask.
In my everyday life here in Switzerland, I wasn’t happy. I could clearly feel how little time I had for myself and for my life. Time to breathe. Time to reflect. Time simply to be—without constantly having to do something. This constant “having to” is already challenging for the body’s natural flow of energy. But perhaps more on that another time.
For a little over a month now, I’ve been back in my homeland. The landing was hard. Not only because it’s winter and the days are cold, foggy, and short—but because I notice how differently people and their “clocks” tick here. Everything is organized, punctual, efficient. And I rarely see relaxed faces or smiles. That makes me reflective.
At the birthday celebration of one of my favorite people, I was asked:
“Angi, did time pass quickly on your journey?”
That question made me pause. Because I couldn’t really answer it. And that’s exactly how this text came to be.
According to our current understanding of cosmology—supported, among other things, by findings from the European Space Agency’s Planck mission—space and time began with the Big Bang around 13.8 billion years ago. I myself was born 36 years ago and spent a little over a year traveling on my own. These numbers, and my statement, may seem insignificant—and yet they changed my understanding of time.
Eckhart Tolle wrote a wonderful book, “The Power of Now.” I wholeheartedly recommend reading it. Tolle explains that time exists only in a psychological sense—not in being.
For him, there is only one moment that is real: the Now.
The past exists only as a memory in the mind.
The future exists only as an idea.
Life always happens now.
“There has never been a time when your life was not now.”
Tolle distinguishes between practical time and psychological time.
Practical time includes clock time, planning, appointments, and organization—it is necessary and useful.
Psychological time, however, is described by Tolle as the source of our suffering. It shows up as worry, guilt, longing, and fear. Suffering arises when we live emotionally in the past or in the future.
Both keep us from the peace of the present moment.
And our ego lives on stories:
“Back then…”
“When I finally…, then I will…”
For Tolle, time and ego are inseparable. Many people wait for enlightenment, healing, or the “right life”—believing that certain things must happen first. But this, Tolle says, is an illusion.
Peace, happiness, joy, clarity, and awakening are accessible only in the Now. When we are fully present in the moment, our sense of time changes: time may feel as though it’s passing more quickly—or it may dissolve altogether. Our thoughts grow quieter, and our connection to ourselves becomes tangible again.
This is what Tolle calls the timelessness of being.
For me, the essence of his book can be summed up like this:
Time is a tool—but not a place to live.
Life does not happen in the future. It happens now.
Island life, the sea, the sun, the people, and diving repeatedly brought me directly into the Now during my journey. I learned to give these moments space and to live them consciously.
I believe that so-called “island people” prioritize time differently. They work and contribute just like everyone else—but they give greater weight to the present moment. I used to spend a lot of time planning, worrying, and waiting for “better times” or the next long-distance trip.
Island life taught me to reorder my time and to prioritize it differently.
Does it take a 13-month journey to learn this? Maybe. For me, yes.
But I’m convinced that we can also step out of time again and again in our everyday lives—
by feeling our breath,
by sensing the body from within,
by listening to sounds without judging them,
and by becoming aware of how we prioritize our time.
And above all, by allowing the present moment to be exactly as it is.
Wherever you are—be fully there.
And to answer the original question of whether time passed quickly on my journey:
I can’t really say. Because somehow, my sense of time stopped existing along the way.
And that is something I wish, from my heart, for everyone.
Angela