I used to love my calendar. My love began in middle school when a friend of mine brought a beautiful 8 ½ x 11 planner to school. She had all of her classes written on the calendar; they were color coded. I would also like to note that she had handwriting I used to covet. As I struggled between printing and cursive, slanted or upright letter angles, neat or messy handwriting, she wrote with perfected rounded cursive that was consistent and emanated femininity to my 6th grade self, but I digress. I came home from school that day and told my mother I wanted to get one of those calendars. I tried very hard to describe it verbally, because, of course, there were no cell phones during my middle school years. For some reason, in this circumstance, my mother not only knew what I meant, but thought it was a valid enough “thing” for me to own; she bought me my first calendar.
My calendar, this calendar, gave me autonomy and agency. I felt, for probably the first time in my young life, that I had control of my choices and of my time. I could decide what and when I wanted to do the things that others told me to do. In a childhood filled with spoken and unspoken expectations, my calendar became my secret reprieve. It became a place filled with my own decisions.
As I aged, calendars aged as well. One could say that my calendar’s development matched my own developmental growth. As I understood that there were more things to organize than my homework, my calendar’s format upgraded as well. There were suddenly more choices. Did I want to organize my time by the month, the week, or the day? Did I want to write in the squares or in the notes section? How big or how small did I want my calendar to be? There were more choices and with these choices I again felt more autonomous and differentiated from my family. I was making different choices about my time than my family. I was my own person.
There was a code of conduct around calendars at this time as well. If your friend, for instance, left their calendar on the table and went to the bathroom, you did not open this calendar. This would be a huge boundary violation. The calendar was private. When someone asked you if you were free you often uttered, “I need to consult my calendar,” for if one’s calendar reported they were not free, it was totally acceptable to decline the invitation.
Communication with friends and family was emphasized with this iteration of the calendar as well. When one made an appointment or scheduled with friends, in order to make sure the time worked for their partner, they actually needed to communicate with them. The phrase, “we need to sit down with our calendars” was commonplace. To me this meant we needed to sit down together with our own schedules and communicate our needs. It helped aid in the idea that a relationship was made up of two autonomous people who felt safe and secure enough to share their needs and their desires for how they allocated their time.
Digital Calendars
Now I am certain that I do not know the correct history of when the calendar began to be digitized. Individually, I did not join the computer and cell phone age at its inception, but I do know that my beloved calendar is now on my phone. This has offered many advantages. As a therapist, I value scheduling flexibility. I love that I can move and change session times with great ease. There are no eraser marks on my calendar. Scheduling becomes a beautiful, intricate, visual, intuitive exercise.
But what happens when one’s calendar starts to not become their own, when time and choice become owned by someone in power, and the calendar that used to represent freedom, autonomy, and agency starts to represent restraint, fear, and control? Digital calendars have now become commonplace and, with it, the advent of calendar sharing, calendar reminders, family calendars, work calendars, and personal calendars.
With these new developments has come both innovation and, in my humble opinion, the possibility for increased anxiety, disconnection, and fear.
I remember the sensation of finishing a session with a client and quickly turning to my calendar to engage in the magical work of scheduling, just to realize that I had received a digital calendar invite. Now “invite” is an interesting term to choose, because what it actually meant was that someone in power was filling in my schedule. They were telling me that I needed to be somewhere at a certain time and were literally putting it on my calendar. Each time it felt as if I had left my physical calendar on the table and they had opened it and wrote on it. Now I know it is not exactly the same, as you can theoretically decline an invitation… or can you? I guess that all depends on where you work, what you do, who your boss is, the hierarchy of your position, the biases of the person who invited you and other factors.
People in romantic relationships no longer sit together and engage in the intimacy of scheduling, but instead digitally share their calendars with their partners. To me this sends a dangerous message. The message moves away from the idea of interdependence, which can be defined as a relationship in which “…partners recognize and value the importance of the emotional bond they share while maintaining a solid sense of self within the relationship dynamic,” and instead moves towards flagrant independence. It introduces the paradigm that communication is now merely telling your partner what you are doing instead of working together for a common vision.
Remembering
Most of my clients know that I am very interested in the concept of remembering and forgetting. From a cultural perspective, I think it is essential to understand a client’s relationship to these concepts. For example, as a Jew, I found myself trained in the art of remembering. We were taught from a young age to “never forget.” Other cultures pass down different ways to stay safe. Sometimes people are taught to forget, to let it go, for that is the only way to move forward.
From a nervous system perspective the concepts of remembering and forgetting also interests me. When our nervous systems are heightened and we are in a survival mode, our brains are not able to remember the details of a situation.
From a calendar perspective, our understanding of remembering is also causing me distress. With all of our calendar reminders we are no longer asked to remember anything and, without the necessity for remembering, we are not given the opportunity to evaluate our choices or priorities. We are merely sent a digital reminder. Before calendar reminders ever existed we actually would forget and miss events or scheduled meetings at times, and, with these missteps, we were given the opportunity to check in with ourselves. Were we so busy that we could not remember things that were important to us? Were our nervous systems activated because we were experiencing a present day stressor and therefore could not remember? Were we having a flashback and not living in the present moment?
I do not mean to imply that digital calendar reminders are all problematic. They have helped us streamline many important processes and have allowed people all over the globe to be able to meet at specific times. I also know it is a privilege to even be discussing a digital calendar. I simply think that we need not forget the importance of autonomy and agency on one’s mental health and to remember that each person has the right to organize and make decisions about their time. Each person deserves a place filled with their own decisions.
Addendum
I wrote this blog in June before the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. I realize that although this blog seems to be about the calendar, it really is, at its root, about the importance of autonomy and privacy, and the rights of all people to be able to control their decisions. What an important topic to explore at this time.
So, I ask again, as I did before, what happens when one’s body starts to not become their own, when choice becomes owned by someone in power, and the government that theoretically used to represent freedom, autonomy, and agency for some, starts to represent restraint, fear, and control? And what happens when the government has never represented freedom, autonomy, and agency for many?
What happens?
What has happened?
What will we choose to remember about history, oppression, despair, and pain?
What will some choose to consciously forget?