When we are young, we do not think much about time passing. We are too busy growing, learning and becoming. We believed rocker Mick Jagger when he crooned, “Time – it’s on your side, yes it is.” It is only in retrospect and from the viewpoint of a baby boomer that I realize that while time is not necessarily on our side, how we use our time matters.
As a child, I would rise before the sun came up so that I could look out the kitchen window of the farmhouse to see deer grazing at the crack of dawn. The day and the rest of my life seemed endless. It is easy to take time for granted. After all, we can only “live in the moment.” Perhaps not knowing the tribulations that might lie ahead is all for the better. Daily, we make choices as to how to spend time.
Some years ago, I made a major decision to work only for myself: quilting and writing. Both of those activities (for me) are solitary ones with the result that I have time available sometimes to listen to music and words of songs that attempt to place “time” within a greater conceptual framework. Today, as I sat doing some appliqué, I listened to Tom Pirozzoli who sang, “If you think money can buy…buy you back your time, you’re out of your mind.” He is right, of course. No amount of money can buy you back time that you spent doing something you did not want to be doing. The last few moments of life are perhaps the most precious ones when one may wonder if their time was spent wisely.
Time passes, with no help for us. Time is measured by clocks and watches (a fashion accessory that is becoming obsolete due to hand held technology). Time periods are studied according to which war was going on at the time, which fashions were in place, and the array of objects of material culture (including quilts) that were being made and used within the era.
“No time like the present” is a saying that urges us to accomplish a certain goal. Inferred is the statement “while we can.” “Time and tide wait for no man” shows us man’s inability to stop the march of time or to change the tides.
Within the scope of history we are all like blips on the radar or else “flying UNDER the radar.” In the greater scheme of things, humans are fragile, disposable and not long-lived, relatively speaking. The days roll on. What do we have? What will we leave behind? Time is at the root of those questions, at least partially so. We cannot save “time” in a bottle.” We can only use it wisely and to the best of our own abilities. We can’t make more time (or add a moment to our lives by worry) but if we apply an awareness to how we spend time allotted to us, we might be able to craft a more satisfying existence.
Patricia Cummings
