“Time Moves Slowly, But Passes Quickly” 

Alice Walker 

Time is a tricky thing.  It always seems to sneak up on us and slip away without our notice.  We are always surprised to find we’ve lost more of it or keep praying for it to pass more quickly.  Each new year we can’t help but exclaim “Can you believe it’s ____?!”  “Where did the time go?,” we ask baffled.  Yet we also know that time is a constant, each year is 365 days (well most), each week 7 units of 24 hours, and so on. We all get the same amount, yet sometimes 24 hours isn’t enough, a week just seems to fly by, or perhaps a month feels like eternity.

We just celebrated the halfway mark of our service here in Lesotho. (although we are well past halfway)  People have asked “How does it feel to have been in Lesotho for seventeen months?  How does it feel to be halfway done? Does it feel like time has flown by or has it felt really slow/ long?”

To these inquiries I find my response almost immediate and surprising, “It feels like I’ve been here seventeen months.”  This past year and a half feels like what a year an a half should feel like.  For once I wasn’t surprised by the advent of December, it didn’t feel crazy to usher in 2019, when the seasons change I’m not caught off guard and each day the setting of the sun seams to be just on time.

I have lived the past 500 days or so and can account for them.  We are often guilty of viewing  24 hours as an insignificant amount of time.  However, when you rise and set with the sun, when you track your water usage each day, when you aren’t given the opportunity to multi task while washing clothes and watching television or cooking, when you are present to what you are doing in the here and now, a day can be enough, can be more than enough.

In our efforts to be more efficient, to use our time well or wisely, to get as much out of each day as we can, we over-schedule, multi-task, cram and fill each moment and somehow miss them all.  We are so busy being busy we miss the passing of time, we no longer know what 24 hours feels like.

We wake tired, go to work distracted, attempt to do two/three/four tasks at once never accomplishing everything on the ever present to- do lists.  We run home late wondering “Where did the time go?,”  we fall into bed exhausted from the race against the clock.

We are always afraid that one day, not too far from now, we will wake up and our life will have past us by.

While tomorrow may not be guaranteed today is exactly 24 hours long.  Try not to schedule every moment, try not to squeeze in 27 hours (24 is enough).  Take one thing, one thing at a time, be present to it, avoid multi-tasking.  Shorten that to-do list.

Friends, don’t let time pass without noticing.  Don’t allow yourself to be caught off guard by the changing of seasons or surprised when 2020 rolls around.  Time is constant.  Contrary to popular belief I think there might just be enough for what is necessary and good.  Live each moment, account for them all.

Salang Hantle,

Bren