Time

An amazing thing has happened this week.  Time has slowed down.  My days at work have been so excruciatingly long; at times it is as if time has stood still.  I know, I should be happy about it.  After all, time HAS been speeding by so quickly, but why at work?  Why not when I am at home relaxing?  Why not the weekend? 

Time is the coin of your life.  It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.  Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.--Carl Sandburg

Time.  Such a precious commodity, isn't it?  It is through time that we are able to perceive motion...past, present, and future....linear and sequential in its progression. The cycle of our lives revolves around the sun...as it rises and sets.  To our ancestors, time was cyclic; they observed the cyclic nature of the day and night, similar repeating pattern of seasons year after year; monthly cycles of moon's change of form etc.  

Everything revolves around time.  Think about all of the things we do with time:

• We have the 'time' of our lives.
• We make some 'time'. 
• We waste 'time'
• We wish we had more 'time'.
• We spend 'time' with our loved ones.
• We budget our 'time'.
• We take our 'time' when we are not in a hurry.
• We plan how to use our 'time'.
• We say that this is not the right 'time'.
• We say that 'time' is money."

And, always at the heart of it, we are using our 'time' to do things. Every moment of our time is like a flowing river...forever moving forward.  And, this passage of time is experienced differently within the human consciousness. Remember the long, lazy days of summer when you were a kid?  Or how a school year could seemingly drag on forever in endless mind-numbing torture as we awaited our summer vacation?   When we are children, time seem so very long; it moved in slow motion as endless years stretched ahead for us.  Waiting for the holidays seemed like an eternity for us...but life sails by much more quickly than we expect it to....and as we grow older, it feels as if the holidays were over before they were even here.  As an adult, on the other hand, many of us can only shake our heads at how quickly the days and weeks and seasons seem to fly by. An entire year, or even five or 10 years, can pass, seemingly, in a blur. 

Have you ever noticed how time seems to fly when we're having fun, but really drags when we're waiting for the clock to hit 5 pm  on a Friday afternoon. And speaking of clocks...try staring at a clock and waiting for a minute to pass...or wait for a boring commercial to end and your favorite show to come back on. Sometimes, when I awaken a bit too early in the morn, I tend to watch the clock to make the time go slower. Yes,these are our short term experiences with time, but what of longer periods of time such as years?  Our perceptions of time change as the years pass, and by our middle years, at least, most of us have become aware that time has been playing tricks on us...that a very slow but profound change has been sneaking up on us: the years that formerly crawled now seem to be racing by?

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
...You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
...Every year is getting shorter; never seem to find the time...

-- "Time" from The Dark Side of the Moon: Pink Floyd--

Whatever happened to the long, leisurely summers we knew as children?  Where have they gone?  It seemed forever to get through through the third grade; so, what happened to last year? Why do we now seem so rushed by life?  Where are all the things we wanted to accomplish, but never seemed to find the time for?
Perhaps it is because we never made the time...but it is not too late.


And so, as we grow older, and time speeds us, we must learn to live each day must be to its fullest, for we shall never be able to recapture it again.  The memories we create today can enrich the present and even future years.  We all want to fully enjoy life.  There is really no time but the now.  
 
Old Time, that greatest and longest established spinner of all!.... his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his hands are mutes.  ~Charles Dickens