Time... Time... Time....

I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately.  Funny thing, time… we can’t hold it or touch it, but it slips through our fingers.  We constantly say we don’t have enough of it and how great it would be if we had just a few more hours in the day.  Then we turn around and waste the time that we do have.

I think I can say that time has always been important to me, even more so than money.  (Right now I would gladly welcome a little bit more time or money.)  Let’s say that maybe you had an unexpected car repair or you needed to pay an unexpected bill and you come to me and say, “Sonia, I’m in a real bind, I’m totally broke until payday!  Do you think you can help me out?”  If I can, I will.  If I have a few extra bucks, I’ll help you out.  Now, let’s say you never pay me back.  Sure, I’ll be disappointed.  But the world isn’t going to end.  I’ll go to work and I’ll earn more money.  I remember hearing someone in a movie say, “Money is the most common thing there is!  They print more of it every day!”  Sure, I may be bothered for a little bit, but I’ll get over it.

Now time, time is a different animal all together.  I cannot stand it when someone wastes my time.  If I make plans with you, that means I have set aside time to spend with you.  This is time I could have spent with my daughter or my mom.  This is time I could have used to work.  This is time I could have spent with other good friends.  It could even be time I could have spent on myself giving myself a mani-pedi.  But instead… I set the time aside to spend with you.  So if you show up late, or cancel at the last minute or do something else to screw up our plans…then you have just wasted my time.

I think the reason that screwing with my time bothers me so much is because I can never get it back.  It’s gone.  It’s not like I’m going to walk down the street and look down and see that someone dropped three hours on the side walk like an abandoned $5 bill.  That time wasted is never coming back.  Perhaps it’s because I have been so busy during the last few years that time has become such an issue for me.  For the longest time, I have had very little time to myself.

The issue of time, time wasted and time spent was really driven home last week.  My cousin passed away suddenly.  She was only 27 years old.  27 years old and her time is up.  She has no more time left to hug her family, send an email to keep in touch with far away friends and family, no more time to sit and watch the sun set.  

And I’m here on my couch, watching a rerun of SVU with the time I have.

None of us are promised tomorrow.  Hell, we’re not even promised next month or even 20 minutes from now.  You could choke on a grape in the next hour.  Tomorrow, you might get hit by a truck.  Or maybe that dull pain you’ve been ignoring is really something big that you shouldn’t ignore.  

Let’s all pretend that we know for a fact that we will pass away exactly 6 months from now.  If we knew that we had so little time left, would you really spend it watching Big Brother or playing Halo or trying to create the perfect body impression on the couch?  I think that if we knew our time was up, we wouldn’t waste that time on stupid shit…instead we’d go out and really live.

But we don’t know when our number is up.  Instead we meander along like we have all the time in the world.  We stay in relationships that leave us feeling empty rather than fulfilled.  We think of friends we have lost contact with and say that we’ll reconnect with them…and then we don’t.   Instead of watching the sun rise or set, instead of watching waves crash on the shore, instead of watching out children grow…we watch TV or we have our noses buried in a tablet of some kind.

And we waste our own time.  The same time we wish we hadn’t squandered when we reach the end of the line.

I’m glad my cousin really lived while she was here.  She touched lives.  She influenced people.    

She left a mark on those who knew her.  

I think it’s time to stop wasting time.  I think it’s time for us to truly live.