Thoughts about time
Note: I wrote the following about a year ago and emailed it to a friend. Today I looked at that email and thought it might be nice to share on my website. I hope you enjoy.
Recently I noticed my beard has been turning greyer. My wife likes it; she says it makes me look more distinguished. My kids are getting older. My son is finishing up his first year in middle school. Mom and Dad are getting older and starting to slow down. These things have all served to remind me that time is my most valuable resource. It marches on, slowly but steadily, like a pinhole leak in a reservoir. Its movement is constant and unrelenting, yet if observed too closely, it appears still, and if you ignore it, it rushes by. And at some unknown point in the future, the reservoir will run dry, and then poof! Time’s up.
This is a conundrum. There are simply too many things to work on, too many things to worry about, too many experiences to be had, too many memories to make, and too much life to be lived. In this way, time is against us, so we are forced to choose. We must choose what to work on, what to worry about, and what experiences to seek. We must choose the life to be lived, because if we don’t choose, we’ve still made a choice – the choice to ignore time and let it pass by freely, to surrender to the tyranny of the day.
My focus lately has been to consciously choose what is important and swim against the current. There are too many external interests competing for my time, and my time is far too valuable to relinquish my say in the matter. Patching the pinhole is impossible, so why not embrace the leak and use it to help me prioritize the things I care about?
After some reflection, I think I like the grey in my beard, too.