The Shape of Time

When I was small, summer stretched out like an endless field of wildflowers, each day another path to wander. Time was a generous friend then, sprawling and lazy, letting me finish whole stacks of library books beneath the maple tree, wander barefoot to the pool with friends, and eat peaches that dripped down my wrists. Life seemed to promise an abundance of hours—enough for laughter, enough for dreaming, enough for doing nothing at all.

Somewhere along the way, that river picked up speed. These days, I wake to find the calendar already slipping ahead of me, weeks vanishing before I’ve caught my breath. There are errands to run, deadlines to meet, and the steady hum of feeling late to my own life. Reading, painting, writing, even laughing—things that once filled the center of my days—have become afterthoughts I try to wedge in like loose puzzle pieces.

I have asked myself how this happened. When did summer become so short? Why do I meet June already grieving September? And what does it mean that I move through my days always reaching for the next thing, forgetting to sit with what is right here?

I think of my children as babies, their small heads nestled against my chest, their lives unfurling one breath at a time. Did I hurry them along? Long for the sitting up, the crawling, the first word? Did I miss the miracle of the newborn because I was already looking ahead to the toddler, the child, the grown man or woman they would one day become? If I could, I would linger there again, stretch those moments thin as sunlight through sheer curtains, hold them open until they lasted forever. But they didn’t. And one day, without my permission, they walked out the door to begin their own lives.

Time does that with everything we love. A dog grows older, their steps shorter, their breath shallow. Did I honor their last days by sitting in stillness with them, or did I glance at the clock, impatient for the pain of goodbye to be over? Parents grow frail, their words trailing into pauses that ask for patience. Will I allow them the grace of all the time they need? Or will I feel that dangerous whisper in the mind that says, let’s just get this over with?

The truth is, there is no rushing life. Time is not something we can hold or squander, only something we can experience differently depending on the eyes we bring to it. When I believed I had endless days, the hours stretched. Now that I guard them like treasure, they seem to dissolve in my hands. Maybe the answer isn’t in having more, but in setting aside the notion that time is slipping away at all.

What if I stopped keeping score? What if the clock lost its authority, and each morning could be as long as it wanted to be, each evening as short? What if being with a child, or a parent, or even my own aging body could be done outside of hours and minutes altogether?

Perhaps the secret is in presence. In allowing a moment to be exactly what it is without measuring it against the one that came before or the one I expect next. To sit with a newborn, or an old dog, or myself, and not wish for any of it to change.

If I can do that, time slows. It becomes wide enough to hold everything—laughter and silence, sorrow and joy, beginnings and endings.

There is no need to turn the hourglass over again. Let it empty, and let that be enough.

Hari Om Tat Sat