When my sister and I were little, we were playing a board game. An argument broke out and my poor mother lost her stuff. The board game ended up in the trash and mom ended up in a locked car in the closed garage yelling out: I’m running away!
I always thought she was a little fruit-loops for doing so…but this morning, I saw the allure. Colin has been spastic the last few days leading up to his sixteenth birthday. The energy was flowing off him in waves. This morning he comes flying into our room with a hair ‘crisis.’ Marly was in the midst of cooking breakfast and in trying to help Colin, burned said breakfast. Lunches had to be made, a new breakfast put together…and hair that made Colin a shoe-in for a Flock of Seagulls reunion tour.
There were tears. Finger-pointing. And I honest-to-goodness, saw myself sitting in the car saying: I’m running away.
Crazy morning. And we all felt guilty because…it’s Colin’s 16th birthday.
Driving Colin to school, I was trying to talk him off the ledge and he interrupted me, tears in his eyes, and said – “Two.” After another second or two he said “two years until college.”
And it hit me. All of that emotional excitement speeding into his sixteenth birthday collided with the reality of time. An unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.
Most kids don’t understand the adult perspective of “time flies.” Colin had his first peek into that abyss this morning. And it wasn’t pretty.
No matter if a life is cut tragically short or if we live a long, healthy life…time is the uncontested winner. It continually marches on, no matter how much we fight it. My grandmother lived into her 90s and in her memoir wrote: it all goes by so fast.
It does.
And so, I told Colin that while we should think about the future, we shouldn’t obsess over it. We should plan for tomorrow but live in the present. This is the delicate balance we must all strive for. At 16 or at 43.
It’s also why I spend time writing about work-life balance and work culture. So many people work in environments that are toxic; living for the weekend. So much time…wasted. Sure, the days may ‘feel’ long and filled with dread. Our focus on 5PM, on Friday…on the next holiday. And it leaves the present moment discarded and unused.
Wasted.
Time is like a river current. Standing against it is fruitless, we’ll only be swept away. Swimming with the current only hastens the inevitable and makes it more difficult to avoid the rocks, boulders and obstacles coming up in our paths.
But floating with the current? That guides us along our journey keeping us lock-step with time. It enables us to embrace the moments, enjoy the journey and milestones and plan for the rocks and boulders in our path.
None of us know when our journeys will end…but we do know they will indeed end. Making the wasted moments even more painful. Those ticks on the clock…gone forever.
Within our life journey, there are also “stage journeys.” Each stage in our life comes to an end at some point…kicking off another, new stage. The end of childhood kicks off our adult life; the end of our single-ready-to-mingle life kicks off building a life with someone else and so on.
It’s perfectly OK and normal to be equal parts sad and excited about the ending and the beginning of these stages.
Where we misstep is when we get “out of balance” and begin fighting the currents. Whether we’re too focused on the future, too focused on ‘endings’ that we miss the present and we miss the beginnings. Or the flip is true, we are too focused on the present, ignoring the future, not planning for it and missing the warning signs of trouble-spots to come.
We must remain in balance with time. Letting it be a companion, not a predator (thanks Cpt Picard!). Give the future its due, think about it and plan for it…but remain living in the present.
On gravestones we often see a birthdate, a dash and a passing date on the stone; that hyphen (-) contains all of the hopes, dreams and experiences of an individual. Cosmically?
Our life is indeed just that little dash.
Humbling? Depressing? Perhaps.
Or…a reminder to us each to live. Take full advantage of your cosmic dash. The odds of you being here in the universe, living in this moment? Incalculable and infinitely low. So live on your terms. Embrace the moments; the good and the bad. Don’t chase after someone else’s version of “success;” living for stuff, prestige or power but instead chase after experiences, love, laughter, hopes, dreams, joy and even sadness and sorrow.
Sadness and sorrow are just reminders that we cared deeply about something. And even those have their place in our journey.
But live. As my 16-year-old experienced today…time marches on.
All of that begs the question: What are you going to do with your dash?
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