IT’S TIME

By Tim Hayakawa

What’s this thing called time? Does it even exist? We can’t see, touch, hear, smell or taste it; it just happens to be there, and I’m not sure I quite understand it.

Einstein proved that whatever it is, it’s relative. I buy that. It speeds up or slows down, depending. Sitting in traffic unmoving for more than an hour, choosing the slowest checkout line for the umpteenth time, or waiting 90-plus minutes in a doctor’s office, I perceive time like I’ve entered a black hole, slow and unchanging, a veritable halt. Yet adjacent passersby spared my unfortunate circumstances seem to experience conditions along the usual space-time continuum, clock ticking away 60 seconds per minute.

Conversely, during peaceful solitude, joyful expression, uninhibited fun and heady romance, I’ve known the interstellar space-like conditions that cause time to rip forward, hours passing in mere moments.

When I was lonely and single, time was stagnant-mud slow, and I couldn’t wait for weekends to end so I could go back to work and have something to do.

When I came to know Christ and made friends, time hastened by, there was so much to do: helping, meeting, talking, learning, sharing, singing and playing guitar.

When I got married, time passed by almost imperceptibly in the background, we were so in love (and still are), then when Jaren and the others were born, time accelerated even faster than I would have thought possible. I’m now middle age, while they’re growing bigger and stronger every day — a joy to behold. Not so joyful is seeing my mirror’s reflection that keeps adding new wrinkles, age spots and white hairs at each new viewing.

I see time now through the eyes of my parents, who on the last legs of their journeys are ever talking of “what’s next,” not in morbidity but more so in preparation; they want to do things right and not get caught off guard. For them, time no longer exists; it’s a mere abstraction, something to track like weeds in the yard.

We all must go, sad but true. But isn’t life’s impermanence what makes it so grand? For if life were permanent, would it be any better, like an unchanging void or law of nature?

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote that death is a gift, for life becomes burdensome for his immortal creations, which are unable to leave grief, injustices, aches and pains behind.

So this obsession of years left to live puzzles me. We have our allotted time, like height or looks. Best make the most of whatever we’ve been given — loving and living and learning and doing. What else is there but to be a good person, or loving and serving God and others?

Total years don’t matter, then, whether 100 or three — what’s made of them is what matters most.

Tim Hayakawa is an accountant who blogs at familymattersinhawaii.blogspot.com.