This time of year used to be a bit more challenging, if you think about it. Family and friends getting together used to be an annual chance to catch up, hear stories, look at pictures, silently judge and relentlessly compare while eating our feelings and perhaps a few of theirs.
“What’s happened” or as we used to call it “History” is now a constant flow of unsolicited communication through smartphones. Yes, I did see your new puppy, he’s darling. Your vacation was such an adventure! We saw that she lost her first tooth…yes, and the second one too.
History is losing its mystery - the present is so overwhelming that we barely have time to put it away before more things happen. Like Lucille Ball at her chocolate factory job, we wrap our mind around what we can, then gobble down the rest. Yet today, Thanksgiving Day, is when we are put on the spot to employ perspective to relative chaos, to consider the last year and tell the world (or the dinner table) what we are thankful for.
I am grateful for TIME.
Civilization has built countless monuments to the sun, moon, and stars, but not so many to TIME, which is (besides the weather) the only truly ubiquitous reality we all share. Some of our key sociologists and philosophers have written sage words of wisdom concerning Time; elegant truths of eloquence, with loads to unpack. These are my four favorites.
Time, keeps on slipping, into the future.
- Steve Miller
We are, all of us, in the very blossom of youth, as we will never be as young again as we are this very moment. Ah.
Personally, I think of this everyday climbing the six flights of stairs up to our fourth floor walk-up, steps I used to take two at a time, then one at a time, and now a few at a time with little breaks in between.
My gentle decreptitude is barely noticable if you look me right in the eyes, but in the corners and just below them lie solid evidence of time evolving me from a dewy sapling to a mighty tree: noble, resplendent, and covered in a deep brown bark. Humans are dynamic, always becoming something, but we’ve no control of the pace - time is our personal Disney™ dark ride where we’re just hanging on and trying to enjoy it, |because there’s nothing more to do do do do.
Time is waiting in the wings.
- David Bowie
I wait for subway trains every day. I wait for the water to boil for tea, for the turkey bacon to be done on one side so I can flip it over, for my phone to charge, for the virtual meeting to start. Payday is always both in a week or so and a week or so ago.
Like water is to Atlantis or the Bubble Guppies, time is everywhere. I can’t see it because I’m in it, but I never get lost because there is always some benevolent neighbor behind my car honking their horn in anger 12 microseconds after the traffic light has turned green. As they impatiently shoot past me (only to be stopped mere yards ahead at the following light), I wonder whether they are the true riders of time - jetting forward inch by inch, or I am more in line with its true nature, my lackadaisical gas pedal foot easing into what rational people call “the flow of traffic”? Who can say?
Time isn’t holding up. Time isn’t after us.
- David Byrne
I always found this a comforting statement: time not rushing us or slowing us down because it is consistent.
I have recently realized that this idea ignores the fact that fact that time, like ships, airplanes, and other heavy machinery, requires steering. I’ve recently discovered that it does not automatically move forward.
I’m a bit embarrassed not to have come upon this earlier, particularly since I am so familiar with the extensive research conducted by Dr. Emmet Brown and his lab assistant, Martin McFly.
Time is on our side. (Yes, It is.)
- Jerry Ragovoy ( I know: I thought it was Mick Jagger too.)
They keep reinventing the food pyramid. And math, and the toothbrush, and smartphone operating systems. It’s a bit much.
Yet I find all that an encouraging sign of Time’s true wisdom.
The best example is MUSIC; old songs constantly showing up in new songs through sampling and cover versions, and not just those block rocking beats from the biggest hits: I caught my daughter singing a soft rock ballad from 1982 the other day: she told me was trending as a background track on TikTok. something that Air Supply could never have anticipated.
The old made new. That’s time’s greatest gift - perspective. I mean, Time as a straight line always seemed kind of awful to me, a road with no end, and Time as a circle was also pretty bad, the infinite loop with no progress at all. But Time is a spiral, what with the seasons and the moon phases and movie reboots and the way that jeans are worn this year.
Time allows us to revisit the familiar, but every time it’s different, because we are in a different place. Time can be a bit much, but it’s our most constant companion. There really should be more things dedicated to it, though I guess the thousands of hours developing the Apple Watch do count… tiny little cathedrals dedicated to time on millions of wrists around the world. That’s a good as a pyramid, really, if you think about it.
I hope your Thanksgiving Day was wonderful; satisfying and warm, a time you cannot wait to remember.
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