I have been thinking a lot about time lately.
How slow time can crawl in some circumstances---waiting in line, listening to a boring concert or speech, holding one's breath awaiting a test result.
How quickly time can fly in other circumstances---coffee with a great friend, looking at your adult kids' faces and wondering how they grew up so fast, being immersed in an activity you love and were born to do.
The older I get the more it seems time flies.
Am I the only one?
I am fascinated with all our efforts to control time, to tame it, to manage it, to optimize it, to use it, to waste it, to fritter it away with detail.
And I stumbled across this John Muir quote that I am sitting with lately.
He wrote:
"Longest is the life that contains the largest amount of time-effacing enjoyment."
I had to look up "time-effacing" to make sure I understood what John Muir, the great Scottish-American naturalist, meant.
Time-effacing describes a moment or an experience where our sense of time becomes thin, or feels erased altogether.
- Hiking in the mountains of Canada.
- Holding a new baby.
- Listening to your parents tell the story (again) of how they met and fell in love.
- Walking outside after everyone is in bed, just to listen to the silence.
- Watching a movie or a play that moves you to tears.
- Doing nothing and reveling in it, rather than fretting about what else you could be doing.
What kinds of things erase time for you?
What kinds of activities bring pure enjoyment to your life?
How could you make more space in your life for those things?
Why aren't you doing them right now?
Longest is the life that contains the largest amount of time-effacing enjoyment!
Get out there and live long, friends!
