Spring Forward

DST will soon be upon us and the days are already growing longer. It has been a long, frigid winter and I am looking forward to more sunshine. 

The adjustment of an hour can sometimes take days to recover from. Almost a mini jet lag of sorts, but then, time zones have always been an issue for me. Interrupted sleep, the urge to do more, difficulty in justifying down time all grow stronger as the spring turns to summer. After long months of hibernation, it only makes sense to hurriedly prepare for the lazy days of summer.

So, time marches on… we often think there are not enough hours in the day, busily hurrying from one task to the next until our bodies say enough and we drop in to bed. But time moves at a different speed for everyone. Yes, 60 seconds make a minute for us all, but how we perceive that minute is our reality of time.

When life is good, and love is new, we say: I wish this moment could last forever. When life is challenging it brings to mind Alice’s question: “Rabbit, how long is forever?” To which he replies: “Sometimes, just one second.”  

We have such limited time on this Earth, we should be cherishing every moment, but often the days go by unheeded and turn in to years, then decades… when our time comes to move on will we wish we had more time? Or will we just wish we used the time we had differently?
And what of the moments and memories that are timeless?  Family and friends that have always been the closest to us. People that even after months or years of not seeing one another, pick up right where they ended the last time. Does time then stand still during the moments apart? Are vivid memories a moment from our past or a simply a way to relive these moments time and time again?

They say the ancient calendar and time keeping systems were created as a way to follow the stars, track the weather cycles and give people a way to manage a day. But even without tracking the hours, days, months of our lives, time continues and shows us the natural progression of life. The cyclical nature of things. The urgency to do or the time to rest. Life does, and will go on, whether we choose it to or not, how slow or fast that occurs is up to us. DST may give us an extra hour of daylight on the clock, but the time is still the same as it was the day before. One long moment from birth until death.

So much time is spent on our phones and computers. Whittling away the hours reading ‘fake news ’and watching cats play with yarn or babies bouncing on a chair is easy. Before you realize it, hours have passed. Some days, the only human interaction we have is through a text message.

We always think there will be time. Time to reach out, to right a wrong, to fix, to change, to grow. While we don’t know how much time we have left, we can take those moments and make them count. We can build memories that will give us moments over and over, we can love enough to transcend time. We can share our time with those who need it most.

Take a walk and really look at what is around you, read a book, phone a friend just because. Look up and smile at someone passing by, ask the clerk ‘how are you today?’ or even play with your dog. It only takes a moment and really, how long is that? Besides, you have an extra hour to fill, so, why not give it a try.

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