We're unable to record a new episode this week so we have remixed the sound and video on one of our favourites, from 2022, about a topic that we're thinking about a lot right now - time. So often our lives are ruled by 'clock time' - we're counting off how long there is to get something done, or we're aiming for a time-bound goal, or we're measuring time wasted or time used productively. But although this is the dominant way of understanding time for many of us, it is only one way of relating to the flow of things. What if, instead of filling time with work or play, we turned things around and allowed time to flow into our activity? And what if instead of trying to secure ourselves against an unpredictable future, we took up a playfulness with the unfolding of time itself? A conversation about living into our lives as an infinite unfolding, rather than a finite game.

This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.

Our source for this week:

What Is Time?

There are two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play…

For an infinite player there is no such thing as an hour of time. There can be an hour of love, or a day of grieving, or a season of learning, or a period of labour.

An infinite player does not begin working for the purpose of filling up a period of time with work, but for the purpose of filling work with time. Work is not a way of passing time but engendering possibility. Work is not a way of arriving at a desired present and securing it against an unpredictable future but of moving towards a future that itself has a future.

[So] infinite players cannot say how much they have completed in their work or love or quarrelling, but only that much remains incomplete in it. They are not concerned to determine when it is over, but only what comes from it…

A finite player puts play into time.
An infinite player puts time into play.

James Carse, from ‘Finite and Infinite Games’

Photo by Joe Pregadio on Unsplash

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About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.

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