Finding Time

Time is an almost physical element that burdens us throughout life. We can have too much of it, we can never have enough. We make time, we take time, we lose time and then we find it. We even give it. Yet it is nothing more than a word.

If one goes quickly through life one wonders where the time has gone. It hasn’t gone anywhere. It is we who have moved on, or failed to move at all. If time is relative, it’s a relative you sometimes wish you didn’t have.

I’ve come to this topic because my time, it seems, is less than it used to be. A natural consequence of living, and one we all must accept. It isn’t permanent, however.

The hands of the clock lead us, point to the future, but do not tell us of the end. “Time enough for that,” we say. Still, I wish there were more of it. That’s only because I never seem to get everything accomplished that I set out to do. There are distractions.

Doesn’t it happen to you, too? You make a plan to accomplish something you want to do or feel you need to do, but it doesn’t happen. Or it does, but at a later time. Do you think about why that is?

It’s because our lives intersect. None of us lives completely alone. Even a hermit living in the deepest forest must at times let outsiders dictate action, I’m sure. We are all connected, whether we hear it ticking or not. The clock, that is. It may simply be a heartbeat that we notice, ticking off the seconds that make our lives, but it is a clock, none-the-less. It isn’t one you can wind regularly to keep it running, though.

We keep track of time using the sun, the seasons, the minutes in an hour. Changing shadows remind us of the passing of time, as does the changing face we see in the mirror. Most of us use a device called a watch; named, no doubt, because it allows one to watch time passing. Shadows, sun dials, calendars, watches, clocks, even grandfather clocks: names to mark or memorialize time. To account for it. It is one of those things that cannot be restored. When it is gone, it is gone forever.

Make the most of it.