Be Present in Time

Money can be lost and it can be stolen. It can be spent, and borrowed, and lent. Time is similar to money in that way. It, too, can be lost and stolen. It can be spent, and borrowed, and lent. But money also can be made. Time cannot. It continues to tick away. This reality is the driving force of nearly all my personal anxieties. The scarcity of time is ever-present in my mind.

I fight against letting that anxiety take up too much residency in my life, but it’s hard for me.

The certainties of our futures often seem tipped in one emotional direction — in grief and sadness and inevitable loss. These certainties, like entropy, seem to increase with time. But with this awareness, we can find some control in the midst of seemingly cosmic randomness and genetic chance. It urges us as humans to find meaning and connection and create memories to rebel against the inescapable chaos that arrives uninvited in our lives.

With the weight of the knowledge of the one way nature of time, we are impelled to make the most of the limited time we have with each other.

There’s no better way to spend time than with the ones you love and that love you. You don’t even need to do much with the time together, just spending time in the presence of one another seems to increase the value of it. It brings order in the midst of disorder. It steals away from the power of Newton’s second law of thermodynamics.

So when you can, drive twelve hours to visit your family for a long weekend. Laugh together. Eat dinners cooked in the hot coals of a two day old fire. Laugh at the dogs playing together. Share stories of childhood memories. Go on a hayride through a local apple orchard together. Eat pizza with crust made from cauliflower and cooked in 1000 degree ovens. At home, cook a fresh pumpkin and bake it into some bread, add some chocolate chips to make it extra yummy. While you’re at it, go pick some grapes off the century old grapevine in the backyard and make a tart crisp to enjoy together after dinner. Three generations enjoying the miracle of water turned into grapes instead of wine.

Eat, drink, and be merry. Be present in time.