A Matter of Time

That’s what life is: a progression of events, to which we give the name “time”.

No one knows what time really is, but we know what it does for us. It gives us a past. One we can look back at, examine, remember, and smile or cry, depending on what it means to us.

We live in blocks of time, divided into seconds, minutes, hours, days and years. In an average lifetime ( assuming 74 years ) we live 27,010 days, 648,610 hours, 38,920,152 minutes, and about 2, 295 million seconds.

Let’s break it down to something more tangible: the time we spend doing things in any one year. We spend, on average:

168,265 minutes a year sleeping
77,015 minutes a year working
36,865 minutes doing housework
28,470 minutes travelling to and from work
25,185 minutes eating
19,345 minutes looking after ourselves ( washing, dressing, etc)
355,145 minutes doing other things - caring for others, going to doctors, hairdressers, concerts, reading, relaxing, talking to friends, etc.

We have lots and lots of time aside from the necessaries, as you see, to do with what we want.

So then. Think about your age. Now look back in time. What memories have you got? What do you like to remember? What have you accomplished? What are you proud of, and what do you wish you had done with all that spare time? I don’t know about you, but when I took my own advice and looked back at my memories, I had a bit of a shock.

I do have many memories, many wonderful vignettes. The wonder of discovering that I loved someone, and always would. The moment I held my first child and the feeling in the pit of my stomach when I looked into her wide and trusting eyes. Further back, there’s a lingering memory of my first communion and the fear that I wouldn’t know what to do, even though we’d practiced a hundred times. I’ll always remember how excited the children were when dad came home and pulled a squirming bundle out of his pocket and they couldn’t decide if it was a kitten or an infinitely tiny pup. ( it was a puppy, our darling Wags, a Pomeranian ) Flashes of music and a cute boy asking me to dance at a wedding while my dad enticed the crowd to the floor with a rousing polka. The memory of burying my father, and smiling as I remembered how happy he’d made people with his music. The more-than satisfaction of the ethnic dinner I planned for 50 people - and did it all myself - and it was a resounding success. My trips to Britain and conversing with the ghosts of the past. Then there are the small wisps of satisfaction. Seeing Riverdance, for real, on stage. Hearing Beethovan’s 9th symphony for the first time ever. Opening a 1st grader’s valentine card, still sticky with glue and glitter, that said “ I lufe yu “.

Memories to keep forever. So many my cup runneth over.

And so few I wonder what I did with all that time. How much of it slipped right through my fingers and ran like a river into the past, to be lost forever to me.

Time.

We count our lives in time. We march to it’s beat and we lose it even as we reach it.

I saw something infinitely sad about it all. I saw that while I did do many things that I can look back at with satisfaction, I also saw that many of those lost minutes were something I could have done nothing much about. Except live them as they presented themselves.

Minutes that were spent doing the same things over and over, because they had to be done. Cooking meals. Washing up. Picking up after the family. Making medical appointments. Working at my job, and the coming from and going to of same. And as I look to the future, I don’t see that so much has changed or can change. The children are gone, but I still worry about them, and do things for them that I can. The job is still around, but I don’t have to run home to make meals and take someone to hockey practice. Certain things are gone, but we have added problems of health and other irritants. Life going on. Everything has changed but nothing has changed. And the times worth remembering are really very few - and very far between.My life is still one rather ordinary and somewhat boring succession of doing the same things, over and over and over. One minute at a time. One hour at a time. One week at a time and one year at a time.

So? When was the fun going to start? When was I going to be able to fill my time with such interesting things that all my past and all my future, even second, minute, week and year would be worth remembering? Was it even possible? I know the odd person lives such a life, but only one person in several million is born to such wealth of constant stimulation. The rest of us take our memories where we can get them, few and far between.

So it was with this mindset that I discovered a skinny lad on a show I was only watching out of boredom. Because I had to fill those minutes somehow. I need not attempt to describe what happened to me that evening, because pretty much everyone reading this blog will know those feelings as well.

He more than filled that time for me. And has left me with many funny and beautiful memories, and with many funny and beautiful friends as well, all those with me on this incredible journey. And it looks like it’s not about to end any time soon.

This is the thing, people. Our families and friends are there for us at all times, but they can only do so much to fill our days with interesting and happy moments. They have their own lives and are living them - much the same way I live mine - in suspended time - waiting for the next good thing to happen that they can remember with a smile and a warm feeling inside. They could not fill my days with that stimulation I so craved. But someone did. A skinny kid I've never even met.

I've found a way to make many of those 355,145 minutes of free time doing something I find incredibly interesting and fun. And what memories I’m collecting along the way !!