It happens to me each year around this time when we set our clocks ahead an hour. It is a painful reminder to me of how futile is our attempt to control time. Only a blink of an eye ago on the verge of spring I was a 10 year-old boy throwing a baseball around in a vacant lot, flying a kite, and riding my bike (hands-free) around the neighborhood. When I was 10 and spring was in the air I looked forward to Easter and couldn’t wait for the school-year to end. When I was 10, there were 38 wonderful hours in a day, or so it seemed. Today, I hate the idea of losing an hour’s sleep.
It’s all about time. Or so it seems. Time is a commodity more precious than anything money can buy. We try to manage it, but it seems to manage us. I wonder if we have lost sight of the real meaning of time. Is the world really a better place because we have DVR’s. snapchat, tic toc, and a score of devices that hood us prisoner in a cyber world?
We all seem to be in such a hurry. But where are we going? My second year Latin teacher, Sr. Clare taught me something about hurrying. She had two Latin words written on the blackboard: Festina Lente (Hurry Slowly). And while it sounds like an oxymoron, those words seem to have more meaning today than they did two thousand years ago.
We do everything quickly. Instead of savoring each moment, we’re like the kid on Christmas morning that tears the wrapping paper off present-after-present without ever taking the time to revel at the gift inside.
Over a century ago the American poet Henry Van Dyke wrote, “time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is not.”
It’s all about time. We never seem to have enough of it, but, as H. Jackson Brown pointed out, “we have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Louis Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo DaVinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein.”
I believe we need to take the time to make the time. We need to consider how we spend the precious time we are given because “time is the most valuable thing a man can spend (Diogenes).” I look back not on the money I might have foolishly wasted in my life, but the fool I was to waste so much of my time worrying about inconsequential matters. I look around me as the world is coming back to life and I see what matters most in life is not money, power or fame, but enjoying the moment and depositing it, not in a FDIC bank, but in our memory bank where we can visit it anytime we wish without fear of it being diminished over time.
At this time of year I’m young again. When I close my eyes, I can see the tree house my friends and I built in the vacant lot across from my house, the cowboy wallpaper on my bedroom walls, the red bike I called ‘the Crusader,’ the dented basketball hoop nailed to the telephone pole outside, and the old house down the end of the block that I swore was haunted.
When I take a deep breath I can smell my father’s Old Spice aftershave and my mother’s Toll House cookies. I can smell the dreams upon my pillow, the fragrance of which makes my heart race and my soul yearn for the way it used to be. I inhale the aroma of days gone by and hold my breath until my face turns blue.
When I sit very still the world of memory comes alive with the sounds of my childhood. I can hear the dreams rustling in my head. I hear the refrains of Davey Crocket and Howdy Doody. I hear the shrill voice of a teacher who used to scare the bejebies out of me. And if I listen real close, I can still hear my grandmother’s voice as she bounces me on her knee and sings, “Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross to see an old lady upon a white horse. She’ll have rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, and she will have music wherever she goes.” I wonder where my memories will go when I’m no longer of this earth. Will they die with me and get buried in the ground?
I don’t have the answer. All I know is that I count my blessings and continue to marvel at the amazing gift of life and I am warmed by the fire of the cherished memories I have stored away in the recesses of my mind. Festina lente.
Along The Yellow Brick Road 