Today we spent another good day connecting with my cousin and aunt. Today I spent some time explaining to them what I had discovered about the family tree, looking at old pictures of kinfolk, and exchanging old memories. I learned a few really cool things about my cousin that I hadn’t known, including the fact that she was on the first women’s team to letter in a sport in her college’s history. And it wasn’t just any sport, it was lacrosse. Back in the day lacrosse wasn’t exactly a sport that Black women played at a historically black institution. So for an African American woman to letter in lacrosse at a historically black university was a pretty big deal. It reminded me that my various siblings, cousins, and siblings-in-law are themselves history-makers.
A lot of times when young folks (20 and 30-somethings) think about experiences of historical significance they don’t realize that these weren’t things that happened “back in the day,” long, long, ago, but happened in their parents’ lifetimes and in fact happened to their parents. My sister-in-law was in the first graduating class of women from the University of Notre Dame when they went co-ed back in the early 1970s. My oldest sister was the first African American woman to graduate number one in her class from Georgetown Medical School in 1980. And while 1980 was perhaps ancient history in young people’s reckoning, in the scheme of things it really wasn’t all that long ago. Or maybe it’s simply that I am getting older and what seems like only yesterday to me really was a long time ago. I mean does it mean I am old because I was alive Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington? Time is an interesting phenomenon.
Coincidentally, I decided to spin the Random Number Generator tonight and landed on a post about time. (Of course, I don’t really believe much in coincidences.) So I am going to share this piece with you from Day 323 on June 1, 2012. Enjoy!
It’s incredible to me that today is June 1. The days now fly by with incredible speed to such an extent that I can scarcely keep track of their passage. I mark them each day by writing in my journal in the morning and my blog at night and the time in between is often a blur. And suddenly we’re nearly at week’s end again. Were we not just here a day or two ago? How is it that we find ourselves here now? Oh my. Given the week in its entirety,I have to conclude that it’s been a pretty good one. I am grateful for that at many levels.
As I sat thinking about how quickly the days and weeks are passing,I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes on time of which I always only remember the first part,“Time is too slow for those who wait.” I never could remember the rest of it,only the general concept that we each perceive time from different perspectives. In this day of instant information I simply had to go to Google to find the full quote by the writer Henry Van Dyke:
“Time is too slow for those who wait,too swift for those who fear,too long for those who grieve,too short for those who rejoice,but for those who love,time is eternity.”(Of course Google also attributed a quote that was very much like Van Dyke’s to William Shakespeare, so who knows who really said it first…) Anyway, it seems that how we approach time is all about perspective. But these days so many people I talk to,even young people, all seem to be conscious of the speeding up of our days. When my twenty-one year old daughter says,“Where did the time go?” I shake my head and wonder where indeed?
The other quote about time that stood out for me many years ago occurred during one of the Star Trek movies in which a character says to Captain Jean Luc Picard, “Time is the fire in which we burn.” When I googled that quote it came up as being attributed to two people–one a poet and the other was none other than Gene Roddenberry, creator of the Star Trek series. In the film Captain Picard has the opportunity to live in an alternate time, one in which he could live out the life he’d have had if he’d made different choices. In the alternate timeline he marries and has children instead of leading the life of a starship captain boldly going where no one (they used to say “no man”) had gone before. He got the chance to experience things he’d been missing in his life–the connection to a loving life partner, children to nurture and raise, a quiet, contented life. In the end of course he remembered that he was a starship captain and returned to his “real” life of unattached, relatively solitary space exploration “seeking out new life and new civilizations.”
So what does any of this have to do with gratitude? Perhaps not much. Except to say that I am grateful for each day that God gives me on this planet. Some days I make good use of the time I’m given, and others I probably squander it, wishing I could get a do-over. I try to approach my days with the highest intentions possible–to do good where I can, to do no harm where I can’t, to live with as much integrity, compassion, and love as I can. To simply do the best I can with what I am given each day. I am grateful for the time I have with my children–the three of us living together again under one roof for the first time in many months and possibly for the last time in the foreseeable future as they continue into their respective futures and I into mine. I am grateful for times spent with my siblings, either in person or virtually. The times with family are among the most precious to me, and I find myself wishing I could have them much more often than I do.
I am grateful for time and the many ways in which it expresses itself. I am learning as best I can to live in the moment, whatever that moment happens to bring; to stop regretting past actions and decisions and fretting about futures I have no way of knowing will unfold. It’s not easy, this living in the moment thing, but if I can truly learn to savor the moments of my life I will really have accomplished something.
