Take a look at these two pictures. My wife snapped them at the same spot in Dinosaur Valley State Park six years apart. Aside from the obvious size difference in my children, you’ll notice the baby fat on my son’s arms has disappeared, replaced with lean muscles from playing mega hours of tennis. My daughter’s cherubic figure has been replaced with that of a young girl. And my hair looks decidedly, um, lighter.
Moments like these remind me of the relentless motion of time. And the constant battle I have to wage against our modern era’s unhealthy view that time is a commodity. That it’s the enemy. Or that it must be strictly managed in order that we can be more productive.
Because these notions lead us to the same mistake with time that some of the ancient Jews made with the concept of the Sabbath during the fleeting days of Jesus. As the author of the Cloud of Unknowing wrote in an age far from now, “Time is made for us; we’re not made for time.” He explains, “God, the giver of time, never gives us two moments simultaneously; instead, he gives them to us one after another. We never get the future. We only get the present moment.”
And it’s the present moment that all too often gets squandered.
We do this in so many ways. For starters, read my last post, where I show how technology has this powerful, narcotic ability of taking us far away from being present and convincing us that the flesh and blood people in the room are “so 12-seconds ago.”
But even when we are not engaged with cell phones and computers, ponder how we spend much of our day, with videos of our past playing and replaying filling us with regret, nostalgia, guilt, or pride, to name a few. Or looking to the future, overwhelming us with to-do’s, anxiety, anticipation, excitement (or dread). The mountainous amount of data that our past and future afford could alone keep our minds occupied for many, many lifetimes.
But we only have one.
And it’s a brief one at that. So how can we make the most of it? How can we make time slow down? Perhaps even stand still?
For starters, we can recover the ancient Christian practice of living in the now.
Because what’s all around you at this very moment is simple, beautiful, and profound. But you have to make the effort to notice it.
You have to stop.
Breathe deeply.
And become aware.
Allow the drive to always be elsewhere pass you by. And give your brain permission to stop filtering out the mundane, and instead, to give priority to it.
As my son and daughter snuggled next to me at the state park, I looked across the field and saw two life-sized dinosaurs. You can’t see them in the pictures, but they loom large, guarding the entrance and giving visitors a great photo op. But from a distance, it dawned on me that if I were sitting here a long, long time ago, I might very well see something like this, minus the manicured landscape and the paved roads. But still.
And then I wondered what the view might look like a long, long time in the future.
My son interrupted my thoughts. “Can we go now?”
“Not yet. Give me a moment,” I said. I inhaled deeply. Juniper. I sensed my children jiggling next to me. Impatient. I saw a raptor floating effortlessly on wind currents scanning for food. I heard the steady trickle from the Paluxy River in front of me, and the shutter clicks from my wife’s camera from behind. A breeze pushed my daughter’s hair back, and caused branches to sway back and forth to some ancient rhythm that still echoed in this canyon.
And…time…stood….
I believe we need to make the most of the time that is eluded to us everyday. Time never stops its always changing but why not notice the change in time and in ourselves?
I can’t change my past or tell my future but I can have an effect on what is happening in my life at this moment. I like this quote: “Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.” ― Leo Buscaglia
May I quit replaying in my head the mistakes of my past and may I quit worrying about what mistakes I might make tomorrow. Let me be constantly thankful for the mercy and grace of God and the fact that I can trust Him with my future.
Time is one of the most valuable things given to us and all too often we fail to respect and honor it because we become so wrapped in our busy lives. We need to remember to just stop and realize the true beauty in nature or anywhere all around us, because it also has a calming effect for me personally.
I attended a spiritual formation retreat over the weekend with loads of preconceived notions. I knew there would be a time of prayer, silence, and reflection, but what was unexpected was the amount of time that I needed for the prompted questions. We were asked to reflect on our past, future, and present. We were given 45 min and I thought “dear goodness that is way too long.” In silence and in deep thought Time Flew! The 45 Minutes were a passing thought. Time is precious, time is fleeting, at the end time was rejuvenating.
Our schedules do all they can to keep us from living in the present. My oldest daughter, age 9, is halfway through (I assume) her days of living under my roof. That this is true reminds me that I must always live in the present with my children and not let the busyness of life rob me of the precious little time I have with them.
Very insightful! Definitely reminds us that with all the constant pressures and busyness in our lives, we need to slow down sometimes. Stop and really take time to enjoy the littlest of things that normally are forgotten or not thought of.
I believe that we should remember our past, live in the present and dream about the future. Our pasts form who we are, no matter if it was good or bad, there is no running from what has already happened, the future is coming and we need to have hopes and aspirations or we would be doing nothing all day everyday. As for the now we need to live in it, like you said, we don’t know how long we or our loved ones will be here so we need to treasure them and this moment while we have it.
I find myself struggling with living in the moment. I think society unfortunately conditions us that way. There is always some ever present goal to be achieved.
I often take time for granted! I am always wishing for the weekend to get here. My best friend’s mom is always telling me that I am wishing my life away! I am on my sophomore year of college and I can’t believe it is nearly half way over! I think too many people are wishing their lives away!
That was a very needed post. I remember being a child, and thinking to myself, “I can’t wait til’ I’m older,” then i got older, and thought “I can’t wait til i can drive,” and, well, that continued for awhile, until i realized if i never learned to enjoy the present, I would never enjoy the next thing in my life. The only thing we should be anticipating to encounter is the present.
I find it hard to just sit and let things be. I seem to always be either worrying about what will happen or dwelling over what has happened. I really enjoyed this.
I really enjoyed really this blog. A good reminder to live in the present.
I love this. I always want to slow down. I want to stop time for many reasons. If I am at the lake I never want the day to end. I nerver want tomorrow come. sometimes when I walk to class or walk outside to my car, I stop and stand still. I do this because I want to feel the breeze and take the day in. It is okay to shut your mind off and enjoy your time. This blog was BOMB!
It seems like when school is in session I live life based on when my next test is or when I have something due. It’s nice to read things that remind you to slow down because it’s easy to just speed through life and take time for granted.
This is so true. I think I speak for everyone when I say that we don’t take the time that we should to remember the special moments in life, or even the moments that create who we are. I really enjoyed reading this post.
This is very well said! Ive actually beent thinking abut the same thing recently. There’s both things in our life than we can, and cannot change. Time is a good example of something that we have no control over. The clock will keep going no matter what we do. We can take the batteries out, but that serves no purpose. I want to look back on my life being glad of the life that I lived. I want to be a woman of God and do the work has has set before me, but to do this I must be progressive with life. We are called not to sit around and be “bored” but to go our and live life to the full, to show others about who God is and what he has done in our own lives. We only get to live (on earth) once. What will we be able to say that our generation did for thing Kingdom?
This semester I took a beginner’s yoga class to fulfill one of my fitness requirements. One of the sayings my instructor would often repeat was, “Wherever you are, there you will be.” As I listened to her explain this statement and thought of it on my own I realized that in order to live life to the fullest we must live each moment to the fullest. Yes we should remember the past and look forward tot he future but we must also be in the present. If our minds are constantly on the past or the future there we will be. If we, however, are in the present then we can put the full force of our lives into the here and now.
I live very much in the moment, and it’s not a great as everyone makes it out to be. It has just as many problems as being stuck in the past or striving for the future. I find it hard to grasp onto anything because everything is constantly fleeting. I agree that it is a good thing to sit back out of time for awhile, but it’s not a healthy way to live your life.