Time to Post Again

It’s been over a year and a half since I posted.

When I looked back at my last post, I was surprised that it had been that long since I last wrote.  The past 20 months feel like they have flown by.  It doesn’t feel like nearly two years.  We all understand this relative nature of time, because regardless of what our clocks say, regardless of how we talk about time, for each of us, it flows at different speeds and those speeds are determined by our perception. 

We usually associate time moving quickly with fun, but the past year and a half didn’t pass in a time-flies-when-you’re-having-fun way.  In part, it went quickly because I’m getting older, and I no longer catalog life by how many Gilligan’s Islands I can watch in a given amount of time. 

When I was eight, 30 minutes (about the time of one episode of Gilligan’s Island) was a long time. I would watch the clock in school with 20 minutes till recess and tell myself that it wasn’t very long.  I’d say, “If you started Gilligan’s Island right now, you’d be running out on the field about the time the professor makes a nuclear powered blender out of a banana and some palm fronds.  It’s not that long. Really.”  But it was.  It was an eternity.  And even though the long awaited recess was equally 20 minutes long, those 20 minutes were criminally short.  The bell seemed to ring ending recess before they even finished the song.  “…the professor aaand Mary Aaa… Brrrriiiiiiiiinnnnnngggggg!” Try telling an eight year old that time is constant.  He knows it isn’t true.

I’m not eight anymore.  Life no longer passes in stranded-boater-chunks. It now passes weeks and months at a time.  It passes with seasons and estimated tax payments and Super Bowls and Presidential cycles.  Even TV doesn’t pass in nice 30 minute segments anymore. With Netflix, I now measure television in entire seasons or series, but that doesn’t mean that my sense of time is now more accurate.

I had my teeth cleaned this morning.  It went really well.  No issues.  In and out in 25 minutes, but that doesn’t really tell the story does it? In the context of my inner eight year old, it felt like the equivalent the entire Gilligan’s Island series, all 98 episodes, twice. 

The cycle is the same every time:  I recline in the chair and tell myself to relax.  I willfully release the tension from my feet; then my legs; my hands; my shoulders; my head and neck… Oh crap!  Sorry.   I open my mouth back up.  I try not to gag on the saliva pooling in the back of my throat.  I ignore the hygienist scraping the plaque off my teeth with that tiny tool made of discarded chalkboards.  I hope that on the next pass, her little pick will slide cleanly between my teeth rather than catching again and threatening to pry two of my incisors off the bone. (I actually don’t think my gums are receding.  I think my teeth are just yanked slightly farther out of my gums during each cleaning.) About this time I realize there isn’t any blood in my hands.  Somehow, even though I’m not gripping anything, I have rigidly contracted all the muscles below my elbows to the extent that I can feel the blood flowing back into my palms as I force them to loosen.  So, I tell myself to relax.  I willfully release the tension from my feet; then my legs…

I also think time passed quickly between posts because the recently, my life has been characterized by a lot of growth and thinking.  Whether with my wife, or my small group, or my counselor, I’ve been working through a lot of “stuff”.  Some of it spiritual.  Some of it relational.  All of it personal. And even though I may still have the sense of humor of an eight year old boy (because every man does), I know my wife would agree that I’ve grown up a decent amount in the past year or two.

So, with all that elapsed, when I tried to encapsulate it into a post, I drew a blank.  It wasn’t that I couldn’t think of anything.  It was more like when you get too close to a video projected on a big screen and all you see are the pixels.  I think there is something there if I can step far enough back, but right now, I’m still seeing the pixels.

It’s been several weeks since I started thinking about this post (approximately equivalent to 2 Gilligan’s Islands), and I’m still struggling.  So, because I couldn’t compose something out of all the bits of information, I decided to write several posts about the pixels and hope they coalesce into a coherent image.  Since I already started, pixel #1 is time.

Time is a funny thing. 

We all understand the relative nature of time even though we maintain a state of denial about it.  Contrary to what we know and what we experience, we obsess on time as if it is a concrete thing, a constant.  We imply value based on how much time we spend.    We measure it with clocks and calendars and stopwatches.  We equate it with money (“time is money”), quality of life (“life is short”) and courtesy (“I want to be conscious of your time”).  We consider it “precious”. We are admonished not to “waste” it.   We even try and “save time” by changing our clocks twice a year as if clocks are little time generators that we can use to create more of it (that one hurts my brain). We obsessively talk about time or orient with time or plan for time or worry about time or schedule time.
 

Test it. Take a day and try and keep a mental note as to how often time is referenced in conversation – sleep, work, being late, tomorrow, yesterday, time of day, summer, spring… 

It is so ingrained that it isn’t just the topic of our conversations and thoughts; it is the filter by which we view our lives.  But time isn’t concrete.  Minutes and seconds and hours and years are concrete, but they aren’t time.  They are tools used to measure time.  They are used to make a fluid and intangible thing concrete, but they aren’t time.  Like I said, time, the time that we all experience, is a funny thing though, because no matter how much you think you can put time in a box, it slips out again.

For instance, how much time is there in the future?  “I don’t know,” you say, “but I can tell you how much time is in next week,”  which is like answering “How many jelly beans are in the jar?” with “I don’t know, but I can tell you how many jelly beans are in a jar holding ten jelly beans.”

Try another one: How much time is there in now?  “Knock it off,” you say.

OK, but if I ask how much time was in the past, you might agree that we are now talking about something more concrete, but of course, this is because we actually begin with two concrete assumptions: a defined jelly bean jar (we never discuss the past without some predetermined measure of time to begin with) and the fact that for all intents and purposes, the past actually happened. 

Both assumptions have problems though.  While we can concretely measure the passage of time in the jelly bean jar, we don’t actually do it comprehensively.  For instance, my dental appointment took about 23 minutes, which is correct, but not anywhere close to describing how I experienced it.  And the problem with the actual reality of the past is that while the past did exist, by definition, it does so no longer.  It existed, like John F Kennedy existed.  But now it’s gone.  We can learn from it and remember it, but we don’t really interact with it.  We interact with our memories and our perceptions and the lessons we learned, but those are not always accurate depictions of what actually happened; just like the depictions of JFK aren’t necessarily accurate as to the man he actually was.  Instead, we glorify or vilify or exaggerate or diminish the reality of the past so it fits into what really exists: our memories, our lessons, our experiences.

The future is even less concrete.  Not only does it not exist, we don’t know if it will, let alone what it will be like.  There is no way to quantify the future.  We simply don’t know.  We hope and we worry, but we don’t know.  We hope and we worry, because we don’t know.

We become like the contestants on the old game show “Deal or No Deal.”  They make the deal and leave with some money or they go one case too many and go home with nothing.  Whatever the outcome, though, most go home disappointed that they didn’t get more.  They feel like they actually lost money.  They made a bad deal (as if trading the nothing they came in with for the something they are leaving with could be described as anything other than a gift).  They focus on the money that they could have had.  But they forget that they never had that money.  They never had the potential future that they regret not realizing.  And just like them, we don’t have a future.  What we have is a now.

Luke 12:25 says “And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life’s span?” Later, in verse 34, it says “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

So, rather than regretting or glorifying my perception of the past or spending way too much energy fretting over a future that doesn’t exist, I’m trying to treasure my “now”.  I’m trying to place my heart in each moment.  I’m trying to engage with the people in my life rather than placing them in preparation of a potential better experience with them in the future.  I’m especially trying to do this in the hard times, because there is so much good even in the bad.  In fact, most of my bad instances look bad mainly because I can only see the current fearful moment, and it takes some distance in order to recognize the beautiful work of which this painful pixel is only a small, but integral part. 

I’m not advocating disregarding the past that shapes us or aimlessly meandering into a future fills us with hope, but for most of us, our lives would look significantly differently if we lived this moment as if it is the only thing we have.  Because it is.

And I hope that I have many, many more “nows”, but sacrificing this one for the one that I hope is coming, simply enduring through the pain of the moment while waiting for the ease of an un-promised future, mortgaging the current relationships in my life for the possibility of more quality time later, is like starving to death waiting for a better meal.