Time...
Time is of the essence...not enough time...the only time is now...if I could put time in a bottle...if I could turn back time...time and time again...time goes by so slowly for those who wait...time flies when you’re having fun...time is on our side...in the nick of time...time heals all wounds...there’s no time like the present……
There is no shortage of illusion around time, this is probably the only truth about time there is. It so often seems like time is just another construction we have created in an effort to understand what it is that actually happens in this place we call earth. What it is that is inherently un-understandable. And yet time goes on, inevitably.
I am getting older, every minute of every day. And so are you.
And sometimes, most of the time, in humanness we wish that wasn’t true because we don’t like the idea of time running out. But can it? Can it really? Because when we have the great pleasure of being around those who touch our hearts on the deepest level, time literally stops. Suspended between tomorrow and yesterday in that one moment, time does not matter.
Simultaneously traveling back to the moment in the breezeway of the house you spent every summer of your childhood together dreaming of this very moment you are in, holding hands in the living room watching television, crying from joy and traveling forward towards a time when your frail hands will be wrapped around each other’s again, getting ready to travel on to whatever great adventure lies in the beyond, reflecting on the 80 or more years you have gotten the great privilege of loving each other as deeply as you have.
This is love, and love defies time.
And this is what we get to do, what we all get to do. Whether it is with our first cousins or our sisters, our best friends or our husbands, our aunts and uncles or our pets or complete strangers on the street passing by and greeting you with the warmest smile you have seen all day. It is what we are each scrambling to do in almost every moment, connect and the possibilities are infinite. And we will do it again and again and again because hearts grow together and then they grow apart, bodies fall away, goodbyes happen, they have to. It is how this place works. But that does not mean the love, the connection and especially the magic of each and every moment we spend here did not exist.
If anything it means the magic in the love, in the connection, the connectivity available to us in each and every moment we are here with each and every person we connect with is even more palpable, more powerful. Every connection is an opportunity to be unconditionally kind, and in that kindness to experience ourselves as the loving that we are. Even if that connection is between you and you, you and your body, you and your mind, you and your soul. Especially if that moment is between you and you, you and your body, you and your soul. Because ultimately that’s all every moment is. And you get to keep them all, even when the moment is gone.
This is called memory. Remembering. Another trick of time.
We can remember fondly every person and place and thing we have ever done, until we don’t. And of course there are also things we wish we could forget that will not leave us, until they do. Best not to dwell either way, same as thoughts and feelings. Children, for whom time speeds, seem to know this better than anyone. Original innocence knows this. Let it all pass through the human mind the way clouds pass over the sun. Let the memories and the emotions and decisions and ideas about time or anything that happened pass over the pure inherent loving that we are, that we will always be, that lies in the center of our beingness fueling us like the earth’s core.
The loving that gets sparked when you are driving through Laurel Canyon for the seven millionth time, remembering all the versions of you that existed all the other times you drove through it. Remembering the countless times the same sun beat down on your same skin which has regenerated as many times as your all your tires on all the cars you have driven that have traversed those very same curves. Remembering all the people you have ever loved precisely while driving and listening to that same song that has traveled through your ears since you were 14, falling in love with that boy you don’t speak to anymore but still love, and love deeply.
The loving that gets sparked when you think about every single moment of time you have ever lived and how grateful you are to feel the sun and hear this song and notice your heart growing bigger with every passing second. And you don’t want time to pass anymore and you want to go back to all of those moments and you want to go forward and see what’s going to happen and you are aware it is going by so quickly, in the blink of an eye. And you blink your eyes and tears start to fall, steadily. And you turn up the music and weave through the cars and without noticing you make it on to the 101 North and suddenly, suddenly you are grateful for traffic.
Because in traffic, time lasts forever. And that moment to stop and sit and breathe and remember there is always enough time, and always enough love because both of those things somehow live inside you, somehow are you, that moment becomes the moment you remember - there really is no time like the present...
...Thank god.