Time has been the bane of my existence lately. It is interesting to consider time as doing harm or ruin, death I understand. During a meeting a few days ago, I began to discuss the concept of time and how there rarely seems to be enough of it lately. One woman shared that she felt she was “running out of time”. Although I feel I am running out of time it was not in the way she was suggesting. For me it is about having too much to do and too little time in which to complete all of my duties. For her it was about the end of her life looming and not having completed all she wanted to do along with the belief that that ability has passed her by.
Stopping to consider her position I questioned her about her “bucket list” and how she was now prioritizing those items. She responded with, “wow, I never thought about it in that way.” So how do we value time and use it to the best of our ability? None of us are “guaranteed” another moment. With that in mind most of us don’t believe our “end” is imminent.
Using time, bidding time, passing time…but still where does it go? “Natural processes run down, order yields to disorder, information disappears, and people grow old, die and decay. These processes mark the forward passage of time,” writes Malcolm Brown in a Science, New York Times article years ago. If time is a concept invented by man to help us organize our seasons and our life, then we surely can answer the question of where time goes.
“The older we get the more milestones we have to look back on. So the farther and faster they appear to recede. If accumulating milestones is truly the secret of the accelerating years, what do we do about it? Basically nothing; we just have to accept it. However, this is not necessarily a negative. True, the good things are coursing away faster and faster into the past. But so are the not-so-good things,” proposed Philip Yaffe in Ubiquity years ago. If memory makes time speed up than does anticipation, make time slow down?
Time has passed as I wrote this. Did I get something off my list? Yes! Is it eloquent? Not so much! So I am going to consider how I might find a few ways to liberate some minutes or even hours by rearranging how I dedicate my time. How about you?
“Time is not measured by the passing of years but by what one does, what one feels, and what one achieves.” – Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian Leader
