How often do you find yourself saying or thinking something like:
“It’s 4:15, where did the day go?
“I can’t believe it’s already June, the year is half over.”
“Has it really been five years since they got married? Since we last spoke? Since I saw him?”
If these kinds of thoughts are a regular occurrence, maybe it’s time to consider time.
The year when time stood still
2020 was a year that brought the world together by keeping us apart. We were told to stay home. Restaurants and other gathering places closed. Zoom became the new normal for everything from work to book clubs.
Some people liked—or at least didn’t mind—being home-bound. Others struggled and suffered due to any number of pandemic consequences like sudden unemployment, having to work remotely or “attend” school online for the first time, social isolation, or being deemed an essential worker and exposed to infection.
Whatever the situation, I hope you passed through the pandemic with very few scars and many new insights about the gift and precious value of time.
The gift of time
It’s common for people to complain that they don’t have enough time to pursue activities they enjoy or causes that matter. Some people, like working mothers or working college students or those who must work multiple jobs just to pay the bills, have a legitimate and unfortunate claim to having no time. But for many of us, it’s not that we lack time. It’s more likely that we lack discipline and true commitment to our passions and priorities. We get lost in the minutiae of daily living and the temptation of screens that scroll with little effort and no end.
We all have responsibilities and constraints. We all have 24 hours a day. And yet too many people feel like they have too many constraints and responsibilities to squeeze into 24 hours.
It’s when we stop and take notice that we feel a sense of loss for something we can’t get back and regret because that loss was mostly our own damn fault.
A gift that keeps on giving
The wonderful thing about time is that it’s a gift that keeps on giving for as long as we have it, as long as we are alive.
It’s a gift we receive every morning when we wake up. Usually it’s something we know and anticipate for the day, but there’s always an element of surprise and a matter of choice.
I hope you choose wisely.