The Butterfly counts the moments, not the months, and has time enough.
Time is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.
Time is a way of organizing our perceptions, of creating the impression of cause preceding effect.
Time is a way of measuring growth, and change.
We think of time as a road, and feel the past receding, getting farther away. We see the future as being "down the road". So in our minds, time becomes equated with distance.
This is an illusion.
The past and the future exist only in this moment....in the now. The now, the present moment, is the singularity from which the entire universe arises; the present moment is filled with limitless potential.
There is no potential when we live in the past or in the future. If we do, we're living in an illusion.
Each of us has a totally unique present moment, because each of us has a totally unique self. All of the life experience we've ever had, and in a way ever will have, is rolled up into our own personal singularity. So each of us is in a very real way our own universe.
It's good to remember that, when we are interacting with another person, we are interacting with an entire reality that is different from our own. This includes the perception of time, and the way we react to the passage of time.
Firmly grasping and understanding these concepts will help us to understand why another person doesn't act or react in the way we think they should - or in the time we think they should.
When Bob finally does call Karen, and Karen says, "I haven't heard from you in a week", and Bob says "Has it really been that long?" He means it. For Bob, that time has flown. For Karen, it's crawled. In Bob's universe, time moves much more quickly than it does in Karen's. One of the reasons for this is that, generally for men, time is mental; for women, it's emotional.
Since Karen is unaware of these things, she assumes that Bob just doesn't care enough about her. She could be lying dead in the street and he wouldn't know, because he didn't bother contacting her for an entire week. In other words, Karen puts an emotional spin on the passage of time and assumes that everyone else does, too. Or, that if they don't....they should.
If, instead of being frustrated and angry, Bob and Karen each make an effort to understand why the other feels, acts and reacts the way they do through the exercise of empathy, it would improve their relationship immensely.
If Karen understands that Bob literally perceives time differently than she does - and Bob adjusts his behavior because he's learned to understand that Karen needs more consistent communication, then each of them has adjusted their behavior in a mutually beneficial way.
This is one way in which Bob and Karen can free themselves from the tyranny of time......and learn to float with the butterflies instead of stinging like the bees.