Time Counts

Time Counts

Tick, tick, tick, tock.

Time walks away from me perpetually.

I try and grab it and hold it still but it keeps on wandering regardless of my efforts.

In my wildest dreams, I hope for duality – a true dichotomy of living; the opportunity to be in two places at once. That would be my secret power if I had the chance.

If there was an afterlife, I rather like the idea of having the potential to live two lives at once, rather like that “Sliding Doors” film – one to watch.

“Time is what stops everything from happening at once” – John Archibald Wheeler

Time stops for no man. That is what they say but they are wrong. Anyone who has experienced a true state of sensuality will know that time stands still, be it for a mere second that reaches out for eternity.

“Time is the justice that examines all offenders” – William Shakespeare

Time takes no prisoners. Time steals. Stealing time. The thief of time. Look how many phrases there are about time disappearing without anything happening. Look how many times we run out of time, watching it disappear before we can even begin to open our entire bank of senses.

Are we all offenders when it comes to time? Does not everyone have a guilty conscience about how time has been spent? Doesn’t a life well-lived belong to someone who can contentedly say that they lost no time, they used it well, they felt that every minute of every hour of every day had purpose and meaning; that they lost not a second?

“But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day” – Benjamin Disraeli

Good old Benjamin is right. Time should not be quantified by numbers divisible by twelve. It should not be counted at all. It should be lived. It should have sensation and the only important time is what you can measure in that consciousness.

This is what I was thinking last night as I lay in bed worrying about time.

How can I capture time? How can I steal it back? How can I get more of it at the time I want it and less of it at the time I don’t?

I can’t.

But I can use time wisely and I have the opportunity to use time rather than let it stray away from me.

Each second is a second. Each minute is a minute. Each hour is an hour. Each day is a day and so forth but how different each of those time measurements can be if spiritual wellbeing is at the core of time.

Each second is a second but it lasts so much longer when you allow the soul to see it, to feel it, to live it, to hold it. Each second is a second that can seem like an hour when you are waiting, hoping, missing.

That’s the trick of time. It’s all in the mind!

“Lost time is never found again” – Benjamin Franklin

Lost time cannot be found but perhaps the trick is not to dwell on it. What is gone is gone. Time allows you to move forward and try to set aside the grief or the angst of losing time. There is always another time, be it now or in the future.

“Time has been transformed, and we have changed; it has advanced and set us in motion; it has unveiled its face, inspiring us with bewilderment and exhilaration” – Kahlil Gibran

It’s not all bad – this thing called time. Even in the most trying of circumstances one should use time wisely, enabling the excitement of the moment to subsume us. Sometimes, I have to sit for hours doing things that I do not want to do. It’s hard. It is sometimes insufferable but even then, we should think about how we are using time.

We may be stuck in a room with a bunch of hopeless people, strategising or marketing, coaching or dictating but we can take our minds elsewhere if we need to use the time more wisely.

And if we have to concentrate, we can think of the time when such useless moments will be gone forever.

I look forward to time. I try not to be defeated by its inadequacies.

“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is” – C.S. Lewis

At last, the final leveller. Time is a socialist! It is shared equally amongst all humans. Doesn’t that equity make it the most perfect gift that should be treasured, reiterating its need to be used wisely?

What is my future? In the next hour? In the next week? In a lifetime?
Whatever it is, I will reach it at the same time as another reaches their destination, or fails to do so.

How I use my time is my choice and although I may share my time with others, it is my time that is important and it is my time that is my future.

“You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by” – James M. Barrie

The Peter Pan man makes sense.

Sometimes, I lie in bed letting all sorts of thoughts and feelings run through me.

Sometimes, I lie on a beach, reading nothing, doing nothing, letting all sorts of thoughts and feelings run through me.

Sometimes, I lie on the settee, looking at a fire, letting all sorts of thoughts and feelings run through me.

I could tell you some of those thoughts but others have vanished with the time that they were first thought of.

I can think of plenty of times when I should have been doing other things but the golden times had to happen. “Golden times” should be in everyone’s day.

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Shouldn’t everyone’s lives be time rich? But of course, the economy would grind to a halt!

Not if someone’s choice of being time rich was to keep an eye on the economy. It takes all sorts to make the world work.

The great thinkers were time rich. The great thinkers are time rich.

I should probably be working now, going through emails, talking to clients, writing papers that nobody wants to read. I should be writing Christmas cards or putting up the rest of the decorations rather than babbling on about time.

I could be playing the piano or the flute or watching the news to see what is going on with the kettling of Scotland Yard. I could be out in the street, taking a walk down to the town to do some Christmas shopping. Heaven forbid, I need to.

And yet, taking time, sitting in silence and writing about nothing other than time, seems to be the right thing to do at this precise moment in time.

Would it be a better world if in our busy lives, people were allowed a moment, whenever it struck them, to take some time to do what feels the most natural thing to do in the world?

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I write about time because it is a precious thing that I so frequently feel bereft of.

And I am one of the fortunate ones who has chosen not to spend her entire week working.

And still I do not afford enough time to the things that I want to do and the people that I want to be with.

Time escapes me and I am angry about that. It annoys me and upsets me that I waste time on the unimportant at the expense of the desired.

But then I think once more about all those minutes when I am using my time doing the things that I really want to do. Don’t those moments count for more than those moments that I feel are lost? Don’t they more than make up for the lost moments? Don’t they last longer, even if it is in my imagination?

Time rich, time poor. That is what I am.

But there is always more time, and to that I turn to a clever man who managed to capture the essence of the spiritual from a book that sometimes appears to be less so.

Good old Peter Seeger!

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones
A time to gather stones together

A time of war, a time of peace
A time of love, a time of hate
A time you may embrace
A time to refrain from embracing

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time to love, a time to hate

A time of peace, I swear it's not too late!

We are losing time but there is always time.

We need to use it wisely.

But we need to respect its movement too.

We cannot cast aside the fact that time moves even when we stand still.