How can one wisely handle time? Fresno writer uses her experience to offer advice
How often I have yearned for time to stand still, to linger in the best moments of my life. But he heedlessly escapes my grasp. Instead, tomorrow comes, yesterday fades, and I am left with memories floating in the crevices of my mind. And now that I am retired, I am more aware of how time rashly rushes onward, untethered and unrelenting.
When I reflect on my life’s journey, I sometimes wonder if I would truly wish to reverse time, to return to my younger days if I could, to a time filled with dreams and hopes and desires and expectations — a time that seemed to have no end. Would I make different choices to change the experiences I have had? Do I have any regrets? Any unfulfilled dreams?
The honest answers to my questions would be both yes and no, for I am a realist who believes we live with our choices. Our options may be limited by who and where we are at a particular time in our lives. Yet, as time nudges us forward, our experiences continue to shape us for better or worse. Nothing stays the same and neither do we, sometimes requiring us to forgive our impulsive or reckless actions. My father taught me to look to tomorrow rather than fretting about what cannot be changed today. It was a good lesson.
We are, after all, only human. If I became upset about something beyond my control, my father would say, “Time will take care of you. Tomorrow, you will forget this ever happened.” He was a believer in the healing power of time from first-hand experience, an immigrant who escaped genocide at age 20, but losing parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles.
That’s not to say, we shouldn’t recognize and amend bad choices or forgive ourselves for being foolish at times. Time tenderly pushes us forward, healing adversity and pain. However, at this point in my life, I would like to slow down time. I feel as if weeks and months are in flight. I suspect this is because I have too much time, too many todays of sameness rushing into tomorrow. That may not sound bad to someone young or in midlife — sprinting through the day, balancing work with managing a home, rearing children, and possibly caring for older parents — all times I have personally experienced.
I remember the juggling years, teaching two or three different courses each semester, after-school faculty meetings, rushing my children to piano, dance lessons, picking up from tennis and golf, cooking dinner, ending the evening grading papers, making lesson plans or attending night classes for a master’s and later a doctorate degree. I’m exhausted simply remembering this time in my life when there never seemed to be enough time.
Today, however, those busy days are history. “Is it Friday already?” I ask my husband. He picks up The Bee, looks at the date, and nods. Sure enough, the week has ended, when it seems as if yesterday was either Tuesday or Wednesday. I shake my head in disbelief. “Too fast!” I say to him, “The weeks are going too fast.” He nods in agreement.
Those who are young do not fret the passing of time. They do not count their tomorrows. In fact, they may look forward to what tomorrow may bring. But for me, every day needs a purpose to slow it down. Otherwise, the hours and days and months and years float away, unmoored boats, directionless, lost forever on the sea of life.
To capture this passing of time, I record everything I need to remember on a large calendar hanging on the kitchen wall, something I started last year, my second year of retirement. I record birthdays, anniversaries, doctor and dentist appointments. Prior to the pandemic, I noted lunches, dinners, and coffee dates. I need the visual reminders to differentiate one day from another.
On this month’s calendar, I’ve marked which days I ordered groceries, drove my brother to his doctor at Veteran’s Hospital, reordered medications, met with my Bookclub on Zoom, and which day Town Hall’s Executive Board Zoom meetings will take place. I’ve also noted two birthdays and an anniversary for which I will mail cards. The calendar mirrors the affairs of my life, reminding me that though time travels onward, out of my control, my days are filled with meaningful living.
Some people describe time as “marching on,” a parade of sorts where the band pauses periodically to entertain the crowd but must continue onward. For other folks, time “flies by,” particularly when one is immersed in a happy event that seems to conclude much too soon. On occasion time may “drag” for those wishing for the day to end. Regardless of how one describes the movement of time, clearly it is always out of our control.
Our days move forward, growing longer from winter to spring and summer, then shorter with fall. November and December holidays will soon be upon us. Another year will end. But a new year, new opportunities will arrive, allowing us to file away resentment and anger and failure and regret as yesterday’s problems.
Time is a gift if we realize all any of us truly ever has is today — a chance to make new memories to fill our tomorrows with remembrances: Saved birthday cards from dear friends, a pressed corsage from a loved one, a wedding album of promises and celebration, baby books marking first words and first steps, journals of recollections and ruminations, framed awards and certificates, photo albums of travels and of family, present and gone, scrapbooks of memorabilia. All carry stories of our lives into another time, even after our time ends.