The Sunday Trap: The Sunday roast, the Greek God Cronus and the all devouring nature of time.

I’m just another raindrop away from being drenched … or at least that’s what my Sunday tells me.

In Greek mythology, Cronus was the primordial God of time, in which time was described as “a destructive, all-devouring force”. This feels fairly poignant by which all phenomenon in turn are created, destroyed and brought to birth again. We live through a socially constructed lens of time and are all its victims. We have the week, the end of the week and the new week beginning. Thus, you can see time eating away at itself, and twisting in the knife on Sundays!

You see, time or at least the mental projection of time carries with it certain grumbling undertones. The symbolic explanation of Cronus’ infanticide and cannibalism (how he devours the very things he creates) is the perfect anecdote to highlight the destructive property of time [see actual Greek mythology for more details!]. We live in a constant state of contradiction when it comes to time, ‘time is valuable’, ‘time is precious’, yet we spend the majority of it outside of presence. The next significant moment is yet to come, the next ‘holiday’, the next ‘weekend’ or ‘night out’. In effect we are left in a constant state of Sundaze!

Why is it that Sunday makes me drift so wilfully into existential gloom? I know I do that every day, but it does feel all the more captivating on a Sunday. The ‘offstage’ character getting ready for his performance? The face beneath the Monday-Friday mask? You have planted the seeds and you are waiting for the results? A time for reflection perhaps, a time for weighing up the positives and negatives of the week and projectile thought vomiting into the next.

I repeatedly assess my current standing on Sundays, socially, physically (always slightly overweight) and especially metaphysically. The mental quest for purpose never felt so pressing.

The cyclicity of modern neoliberal living manifesting the cyclicity of our inner chaos. Where the quest for meaning is divvied up into ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘neutral’ segments.

Just listen to the radio to highlight how ‘Monday’ is the worst day of the week. As if our entire week is a countdown to the weekend, but then this gets boiled down further, as Sunday might become the ‘sad day’ before it all starts again. The weight of expectation on us to consume Friday night and Saturday like some godlike feast can be all too suffocating.

I remind myself that Sunday is not inherently sad at all; there is only the label on it, highly contextualised to my own narrative that carries certain connotations.

Then it dawns on me. Present moment awareness is the only way to step outside of time.

In the moment you are being the moment, you are not dancing around it, anticipating or procrastinating. You represent the epitomic of your intrinsic nature. That is, the only time (excuse the pun) you are truly free. Free from the shackles of the labelled segments you call your life. There is no waiting anymore?

Mindfulness devours the label; strips back reality outside the boundaries of merely labelled time into the very nature of presence. For sure time passes, but not with the gloom associated with conventional time.

Remind yourself there is no Sunday really, I mean sure the day is book-ended if you work Monday-Friday, for those part timers may experience a Wednesday as a Sunday, or for those who don’t work Sunday may feel like every day. Whatever the derivative, the point is to remain on point. That is, don’t wish away time. There are on average only 53 Sundays every year. Make them count. Make every moment count.

Ride the cyclicity of life like you ride your bicycle. Don’t fall in-between the spokes but hold your head up high and breath as if each breath was your last.

So this Sunday, don’t drown in time. Drowning in gravy is a better option, roast those potatoes and lull into quiescence. Stick on a documentary and indulge your indulgence.

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