Just a second. Have you got the time?

lsproule@thereview.ca
You can always make more money, but you can’t make more time. As I stood in the bank line-up last week, I joked with the teller: I wish I could withdraw a few more hours today. I am really in need of more time to get everything done.
“More time?” someone piped up. “If you had more time, you’d just fill it up with more things to do.”
Just a second, I thought. But alas, the speaker was right, I thought.
But there has to be a way to get a grip on time.
Some people seem to amble through life. I watch how people walk down the street. Some of us scurry, heads down, on a mission, while others walk with heads held high, taking in the world around them.
Maybe Chuck Berry knew the secret to slowing down time, which seems to pass more slowly when we are “riding along in an automobile with no particular place to go.”
Time seemed to pass so slowly during the summer years ago when I was on typical childhood expeditions with other kids walking through sweet-smelling fields, poring over fossils found in the stone fences, checking out cowpies and how they change over time, exploring little-visited corners of the farm and rejoicing when we surprised a porcupine.
Seemed like a day lasted a year, when I think back.
Today, a week passes in the blink of an eye and it isn’t just me: everyone agrees that time is flying.
But here’s what I think: time passes just the same as it ever did, but we barely see the experiences of our day because we are in such a hurry and are trying to cram so many things into one day. And because we barely take note of life passing in front of our eyes, we move on -- too quickly to savour the moment and feel time passing.
We do this because it is expected of us. When someone says he or she doesn’t have time to do something, almost everyone in the room wonders how that person could be busier than they are.
Sometimes I think that we are rushing through life because it is like one giant root canal. We have so much to do and are so stressed out that we don’t want to think about it and just want to get it over with.
But that can’t be true.
I know that when I am reading a book and don’t want it to be over, I slow down to sort of ration it out and make it last.
I bet you do this too: when you are particularly enjoying a meal or a favourite food, you eat more slowly to make it last.
And so, it would seem that if we all slowed down and made sure that we were enjoying what we do, time should pass more slowly.
There is no getting around it, though. We have strange notions about time. When we have nothing to do, we fill in the time. When our schedules are busy, we load still more in and say we are making time. When we have had enough, we take time out. And when our lives are too much for us, we need time away.
While a feeling of joy can pass in an instant, grief can linger on and we all know there is only one healer: time.
One thing is for sure: when we are born, our life bank accounts have some time credit in them, but we don’t really know how much time we have.
What we do know is that we can choose how we spend our time and we would do well to consider carefully how we spend our time. We can’t borrow time and can’t steal from someone else to shore up our own time-depleted lives.
I think the answer is that there is time that our senses can detect and that is now.
If we focus on now, we can live and laugh, accomplish and connect and make each moment matter.
Just a second. And there you have it: you’ve got all the time in your world.