Time in Perspective

I've been trying to write about time, but all I could say about it was gloomy.

Like sometimes how it feels that time really is NOT on your side. Maybe you're lying in rubble in Haiti, hoping someone will come dig you out. Or when you have a chronic disease or condition and you receive news that it's progressing.

No, I am in neither situation, though I have a family member who faces the second. Unless, I suppose, you count living as a chronic condition, which gee, yes, I have that, thanks. Gloomy.

I can be okay with gloomy. Gloomy happens, as does bright and shiny. But I was depressing myself. So I didn't write.

I am today, however, because I came across this video: it shows a time-lapse movie of natural scenes. It's pretty long, but it is pretty, and not bad company for a few minutes.

Watching the clouds pass over the landscape helped me gain a different perspective on time. It's bigger. I'm smaller.

This morning I look out over the landscape my grandfather chose and know it's the same, even though details are different. Different kids run down to the edge of the water and throw rocks in. When it snows, different adults put on skis and tour around the property. If my grandfather could be here, he wouldn't know us--he couldn't even have predicted our presence, not really. Different.

But the rocks are the same, as are many of the trees. The water itself has soaked into the cuffs of many pant legs, evaporated, traveled the world, and finally sifted as snow into the bush, where it has melted and flowed and found its way back into the bay.

Others may find our relative impermanence to be depressing. I find it humbling but ultimately reassuring.

Little-t time isn't always on our side, but approaching a birthday ending in zero (also something a different brother is facing, as am I) doesn't have to mean taking an inventory of all that we have not yet done. It can be a time for celebrating the choices we've made in the relatively short time we've had.

And big-T Time: It passes, and as it passes, it gives us space to dance with the rocks and trees, and then we make way for others. Their dance will be different--but the same.