Time is a funny thing. When you’re a kid, it seems a bottomless supply of hours and days, moving so slowly you wonder if you’ll ever grow up. In your early adult life, you can’t wait for time to pass quickly so you can get to the next landmark date–the day you can get your driver’s license, your graduation day, turning 21…it all seems to pass at a turtle’s pace and you wonder if you’ll ever get to where you want to be.
As you move into life’s more serious pursuits–career and family–time moves so fast, you feel like Einstein is playing some horrible physics joke that you are somehow too dense to understand. Why does an hour suddenly pass in a matter of seconds, days like minutes, weeks like hours. What kind of evil cosmic joke is this? Why can you suddenly never get the time to have a quiet evening at home with your significant other, take a walk in the woods, or just sleep for a whole, glorious day?
I think that this must somehow go in reverse once you get to retirement age, or at least I hope it does. Hopefully, time will go at that glorious turtle’s pace again where it seems like time stands still almost. Is this where we get to fingerpaint again, take a barefoot walk through a stream, and shriek at its fresh, amazing cold? Spend hours laughing at stories that we’ve heard from our loved ones a hundred times before, but the retelling and the time spent together in the retelling makes them all the more precious? Is there a way we can steal a little of this “slow time” for today and spend some of these ever so important moments now? I hope so. I’d like to try. I bet so many of you would give your pinky toe to spend some slow time with your family, friends, and maybe even just some “me” time for yourselves.
I love the quote I headed this post with–it brings our time home to us in a concrete way that makes us understand just how valuable our time is, and how it is a waste to spend it in ways that do not make us shiver, smile, laugh, cry, or hug someone just to let them know they are not alone. Spend some of that time today telling the people you love just how important they are to you. Smile and wave at a neighbor who you’ve never spoken to before. Tell the person behind you in line at the grocery store a funny joke you just heard. Help someone today…just for the good feeling it leaves you with. Tell your kids how amazing and wonderful they are, even if you’re going through a bumpy ride with them right now. It will matter later. All these things will. It is these coins of compassion, love, and laughter that we give by which we will eventually measure our lives.
I am lucky enough to know someone who can put a smile on almost anyone’s face at any time, no matter how awful or stressful the situation. What an amazing gift to have, and what a gift to be able to give to others. Give those gifts that you know you have within you. It matters. And people do appreciate it, whether they express that appreciation or not. Know that when you give those things, it makes you, and the world, a better place. (And I think it adds to your “coin bank” too.)
