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The Passing of Time

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.” Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
I have to admit something: I am obsessed by the passage of time. It is a constant presence in my life, as if I have some allergy that results in irritation or an itchiness that I must constantly attend to. I am constantly paying attention to the passage of time. I have no idea how this happened. Here's an example: I do not really want to be celebrated on my birthday like so many do. I prefer to take the day off from work and contemplate, not be rushed, sip the coffee slowly in the morning, sit by a stream for a little while, anything but be glad that I am another year older. The changing of seasons, say from summer to autumn, is also an emotional experience for me because I see it as a kind of dying, an ending to something that is now being lost. I wish I could see the new season as a new beginning, but I do not. I focus on the end. I mourn my way month-by-month through the cycles of life. I suppose this outlook on life may actually deepen the pleasures I experience because they are commingled with the pain of any experience's brevity.

I told my daughter the other day that I want to buy raw sugar in the brown packets because I love the way it tastes, but I then immediately said that if we did that, it would no longer be special when we get to have the sugar in a nice restaurant or on a cruise. It would become something normal, something always available. Maybe I love the raw sugar because my time with it is so limited, just as it is with seasons of the year, or certain people I've known, or even my own children. Children are born and you think you have them for a long time, only to find that "soon enough" their childhood and your youth is gone and though we should know better, we are still surprised by it when it actually happens. We have been in the same house now for 15 years, and even though moving out closer to where we work makes sense for a number of reasons, I want to stay put because staying in one place makes me feel as if I am marking time, preventing it from passing or at least slowing it down.

I recently heard a quote from Will Durant, who said that as we get older, life puts us under “general anesthesia.” I think I know exactly what he means. If you live long enough, you will feel a certain numbness toward life because of all that you've been through, even though you can't always explain what it all means.

The writer of Ecclesiastes, a book in the Bible, wrestled with life, apparently from the vantage point of nearing the end as the author looked back on what his life and the choices he made means. The profound statement in this book is when the author pointed out that “God has set eternity in our hearts.” Some people reject this innate longing for eternity and “live in the moment” (You can do a search for that phrase and find it is a current popular catchphrase), but Ecclesiastes correctly acknowledges the source of our yearning to break free from time's limitations seems to explain what I, and I think most people, are feeling. My sensitivity to time and its brevity is pointing me to something more than this life offers, particularly since I am likely two-thirds of the way toward the end of my journey. If this is all there is, then I am approaching the shore and had better be living in the moment because you reach a point where all that's left are moments.

Despite this longing for eternity, I still tend to focus on the loss of time in its many manifestations, like when I walk by the hourglass in our home that someone gave me years ago and I turn it over so that the sand runs down. I guess this is what I feel—the sand running down in the hourglass—every day of my life. Maybe this is how eternity in the heart looks, but I am not certain. But I do wonder how many more times I will get to turn the hourglass over. At this point, all I can say is . . . so far, so good.
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