Sitting in silence, the only sound you can hear is the ticking of the clock, your breath, and if you really listen…your own heart beating. Another second. Another breath. Another minute passes by. Around and around, the hands fly, you are now another hour older.
You know we only get so many hours on this earth, right? We are all clueless to how many. We are all clueless to when our time is up, yet unfortunately, the only thing ever proved and known for certain is death. What lives must die. Yet that doesn’t change the steadiness of the ticking clock. It will still tick by second by second, day by day, month by month, year by year.
Time has not gone faster at any point in your life. It’s steady like our resting heart rate. Yet as a child this is not so…at least not in a child’s mind. Because in a child’s mind, there is no such thing as time. In a child’s mind, there is only that exact moment. When told to wait, a minute, or worse yet, five, it feels like a dreaded year long moment as they plead in agony…'mom, mom, mom come on.' A young child struggles to wait, not because they don’t want to, not because they are impatient, but because five minutes is not understood by a child. What they want, they want in that moment. Because that is how they live…in that exact moment.
Can you imagine waiting five minutes for a web page to load? Or for a phone call to go though? Well, I am guessing that long dreaded five minutes a child is asked to wait feels the same. Only we understand time. They do not.
And that is beautiful. Childhood is beautiful and magical and fairy-tale like. In childhood your dreams and stories can be whatever you want them to be. At least for the fortunate children who get to experience childhood the way it should be lived. Free to play, dream, image, hope and wish.
Now fast forward 90 years and you sit by the window, the sun warming your lap. Suddenly the days are long and slow again. Yet instead you don’t run free against the warm wind, instead you pace yourself, watching your every step, actually noticing the warm wind brush your weathered skin. Skin full of lines and wrinkles...each telling a story of it's own. You don’t look to the world with a sense of wonder, instead you look back on the life you have lived. You look back on the life you have created, hopefully with a sense of peace and happiness and delight. Hopefully without too much regret.
Yet what about all those years in between? Those years from being a young child to sitting quietly at 95 years old? Where did all that time go? Where did those years run off to? Regardless of the life you will lead, are currently leading or the life you are now looking back on, the clock still ticks her slow and steady tick. Time has not gone any slower or faster at any point in any of our lives. We all know that yet it never feels that way.
As time ticks by day in and day out, leading your days into night, leading your night’s into the wonder and opportunity of a brand new day again…we go along. Our hearts beating, our breath steady. Those days that pass…all those years…they make up your entire lifetime. Your life isn’t ‘one day when I do this or that’ your life is now, this very exact moment.
The magical thing is, the choice is yours to how you want to spend your days. If you are forever trying to ‘keep up’ or constantly feel like you can’t remember the last time you really enjoyed yourself or enjoyed time with friends, family, or enjoyed special moments in your life, then maybe it’s time to rethink what kind of life you are creating. What kind of story are you writing?
How are you spending your time?
You are in control. You write your own story. You can make it whatever you want.
Yet…as we get older, aren’t we stuck with responsibilities? Children, jobs, cars, mortgages, bills…
Sure we are, yet of all those things, we are still in control of much of them. We don’t need the biggest house, the fanciest car, our child to be in every sport and dance program out there. We choose that lifestyle and therefore have to pay to make up for it. Which in turn cost us our time. Once again, it is our choice.
When our life becomes about rushing, comparing, impatience, bill after bill, our time fleets along with any sense of wonder we once held deep in our heart and soul. We become resistant, moody, aggravated, tired. We begin to lose that fiery light inside we once had. If our career lights our soul and gives us purpose and meaning, it’s a whole other story. It flows into our life and is meaningful and becomes part of our story we’d love to tell. Yet many souls out there are drained by their jobs because they were never life-giving purposeful jobs in the first place, which in turn only further leave them drained by the overall circumstances in their life.
Yet it doesn’t matter. Regardless...time still ticks by.
So take this challenge. Set aside a moment in a quiet space. Perhaps in a sunlit room, or in a quiet place in nature and simply stop. Stop and look around you and breathe. Begin to think back to when you were a child. Think back to your sense of wonder you held in your heart and the questions you’d once ask. Now fast forward. Think to when you will turn 95 years old. You’ll be sitting somewhere. Where? In a cluttered house, in a peaceful garden? In a busy city? By the ocean? You will be sitting looking back on your life, not forward. There will be nothing to rush to anymore because you’ve got nowhere to go. How do you think you will feel in that moment? Regretful? Saddened? Lost? How about calm? How about at peace? How about enjoying the silence…except for the sound of the clock ticking, thankful for another breath and another beat of your heart. Something you had seemed to have forgotten for the last 80 years.
Time is the same day in and day out. It’s the choices you make in your life with the time that you are given that will determine it all. The most amazing thing is, the choice is your's. Your sadness or happiness, life draining or life giving, A life of regret in the end or a magical story to look back on and be told. Believe it or not, time can be on your side. The time you have here is yours.
So if you want to challenge yourself try to think about where you are in your life. Think about where you would like to be and how you would like to have your life go. It all starts with a thought. For real changes only happen when you begin to question yourself.
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