Holding Back Time

Here is Beauty holding back Time..... an absolutely beautiful piece of art.  One can feel the tension of forward momentum that Time is showing, even a bit anxious..... to be moving on.

Have you ever felt this way?  Wishing you could hold back the hands of time.....or lingering too long in the way things were?

I spent a good chunk of time in my youth trying to hold back the past.  I kept going back in my mind's eye.... I had too many beautiful experiences in too many foreign lands to let go of so easily.

I was that teenager practicing soaking in moments, memorizing each detail, the smells, the air, cloud formations, what people were wearing, what things looked like.

Time.... Sometimes it moves so slowly -- waiting at the DMV for an eternity (especially those days before smart phones!) But then contrasting that with your own kids.....Way different.... with kids it is one quick moment, whisking by like a cat's whisker faster than we can see, faster than we are every ready for -- when my first graduated from High School I only realized then that in just 4 more years all the of rest of them would be out of the house.

We say things like:  "Don't waste time"....  "Make the best of each moment"  Time is important.  We associate it with how long we will live...to some it defines not only life, but their existence as well.   Some "experts' say don't live in the past....forget what happened, only look forward.

We use time to measure all kinds of things... maybe it is God's way of thinking we are in control... setting limits for tests and teenage curfews, pregnancies, detention and time outs, when we are done with school etc....

 I think time is just a measure of a memory... when an experience begins and ends.

What if time were a series of innumerable books on an eternal bookshelf.  Not chronological.  No, just recorded "moments" yes...even "memories".  All of them already lived out and recorded.  And anytime we could just go to that "moment" and see ourselves living it out.  learning by watching ourselves in that moment.

Is time just something that brushes past us fleetingly?  It seems as if we are constantly struggling against it.  Like a the pull of a tide....constant pressure, misunderstood tension.  We let it do terrible things like measure goodness and badness, often it is a heaviness of regret, dormant dreams, drowned desires.....things not done.

Or are they just things that did get done.... the 10,000 activities, tasks, so that we could say things like "we did it" , "see how much we accomplished"......Life's mother of all checklists.

I think time should be savored, like a delicious sips of chocolate milk....  sipping a thousand memories....

So I say let time fly! .... release him... your beauty won't fade.  Your beauty is in the memories themselves... carved in, never to fade.  Being your best self in every moment is the way to go... ride time like a bronco buster...!!  Why not?  don't hold back, don't look back.... don't sell yourself short by always wishing the ride was just a minute longer.....  Run to the next one and ride it hard and ride it beautifully..... then sip on the memory later... it tastes better that way.