Last summer we had the Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run visit Oxford. A runner from Australia said they had been reading their journal recently, and came across an entry when Sri Chinmoy was speaking to me on a Christmas Trip in Malaysia. She said she wrote down, that Sri Chinmoy had said: “I made good use of time.”

I don’t remember this. When you were in close proximity to Sri Chinmoy, it was easy to concentrate on the consciousness of the moment. The mind wasn’t working; it was more like being in the heart, absorbing the glimpse into another word. So I didn’t really remember much of the conversation. It would have been very nice to remember, but the words always felt less important than the inner experience.

But, at the same time, it was nice to hear these words after a gap of 12 years! The interesting thing is that summer I was often thinking to myself “I wasn’t making the best use of time.” I wasn’t able to cycle and had a bit of a virus. In theory, I had more free time, but without the physical discipline of cycling, I found it harder to be dynamic and make good use of time. When you have all the day ahead of you, it is tempting to think, there is no rush to get things done, and time gets wasted, then at the end of the day, you think you could have done more and regret the slow start to the day.

Since getting back into cycling this month, in theory, I have less free time, but on the other hand, it forces you to be more careful and disciplined with time. We have the capacity to make good use of time, but it is something to constantly work on.