“Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.”— Alice Walker
The passing of time has been on my mind recently. I don’t think I can explain precisely what this quote means, but somehow, I know it is entirely true. Seconds can seem like an eternity, and years can go by in a flash. We often say things like, “It seems like only yesterday” or “that was a lifetime ago,” and somehow both of those statements are honest and valid.
I wonder if any of us truly understands time. We love to mention that it marches on, as though it were consistent, but in our minds, it sprints and crawls at its pleasure. We have measured it in seasons, lunar cycles, tides, sunrises and sunsets, and eventually mathematical units, but our sense of it remains fluid. At least mine does.
On a smaller scale, I have no concept of time at all. I can spend an entire day preparing to do something, and then be absolutely shocked when it is time to actually do it. I never have any idea where the time went. I fully believe it’s possible to run five separate errands in an hour, and yet convince myself it will take seven hours to perform a 15-minute task. My brain thinks I can leave my house at the same time I’m supposed to arrive somewhere else. I’m getting better, but it does not come naturally.
I received a life-changing bit of wisdom on a front porch in Vermont on my 31st birthday. I was feeling stuck and couldn’t quite figure out my next steps. I thought about starting a business. Starting a new band. Getting a new job. Moving to a new address. None of these felt like a resounding yes. I mused about finishing my degree, but immediately questioned whether it was ridiculous for a person in their 30s to be a college student. That night, one of my most cherished girlfriends said to me, “In five years, five years will have passed no matter what you did with it.” What a perspective this was! For me, a thoroughly new look at the way time can pass. I wasn’t too old to go to college, I was too young to deem any ideas too ridiculous or time-consuming! That one sentence was all it took. As you know by now, I did, in fact, go back to college. It was difficult. It was expensive. (Still is, thanks to student loans, but I digress.) It was worth it, and I would do it a million times over again. I celebrated my 35th birthday in my first classroom, and six more birthdays have come and gone in that same room. I couldn’t be happier about it.
There is a tall and expansive tree just outside my music room window. For seven years, I have watched this tree change from bright summer green to shocking orange, red and yellow. Barren in winter, a stunning explosion of white blossoms in the spring, and faithfully back to green again. If you catch it at the right time, the sun rises just beyond its branches. I try to notice this and take a moment to soak it all in when I can. What a breathtaking illustration of the passing of time.
One of the many joys of teaching music is getting to know students for six full years. An eternity in child-time, and yet, it goes by too quickly for my taste. I have been known to cry on the last day of school, and I imagine I always will. These are not tears of sadness. These are tears of pride and gratitude, of disbelief, of remembrance. Funny things they’ve said. The solo they sang in second grade. The way they used to pronounce certain words. And off they go into the world beyond my classroom. Beyond our little campus and its massive tree.
A dear friend of mine just had a precious baby girl. My nephew and niece are somehow in college. We lost my uncle after 78 years on this earth, the first of his generation to leave us behind. I am living in the middle of these immovable markings of time. Trying madly to soak it all in. Promising to savor moments, and striving to preserve memories. Knowing I was once that baby, and I will one day be the aunt who is gone. When you consider time in this way, any excuse to miss the sunrise beyond the leaves isn’t a good one.
I still don’t understand time and its relentless passing, or how our perception can be so subjective. But I know it is a gift. I know it is fleeting. Friends, may your times of trouble be brief and your times of joy be long.
