If time is a scarce commodity, then there will never be enough time for our selves. Roger Rosenblatt noted prophetically in a Time magazine essay more than a decade ago that: “the appointment we are most likely to break is the appointment we have made with ourselves.” Thus, Quad One shrinks in size. Furthermore, there is no time for feedback and no time for disclosure. Hence the Quad Two and Quad Three material is less likely to move into Quad One. We have lost the Sunday afternoon visits to neighbors and have lost the gift of pleasant and entertaining conversations. We have become passive recipients of these conversations (via talk radio) and are now voyeurs of other people’s activities (via “reality” television).
Perhaps most importantly, as I mentioned in Chapter Two, there is no time for the unknown – for accessing the mysteries of Quad Four. Thus, Quad One loses yet another source of new information and perspective about self. This lack of time for Quad Four might even reside at the heart of “extreme sports.” Maybe this is the way in which we rapidly access certain aspects of Quad Four (such as fear) without taking up “a lot of time.” However, it is one thing to be confronted with new experiences (such as in extreme sports and “ropes programs”). It is another thing to reflect on these experiences and learn something about our self from this experience.
“Ropes programs” are often all about the experience (being conducted by sports-inclined personnel) and not about what this experience conveys to our selves about our selves. If the experience is designed to help us face our selves, it is often exclusively about confronting our fears. At its best, a ropes program is about how collaboration with other people can help us face these fears. This is fine. But what about other aspects of our unknown self: our creative self, our intuitive self, our undeveloped interpersonal self, our shadow? Other workshop designs help with this, ranging from continuing education programs in the expressive arts to intensive journaling workshops (often in the Jungian mode). But is this enough and do many people set aside precious time for these Quad Four-oriented activities?
