SLOPPY SECONDS

We are careless with the gift of time.   Sloppy.  We treat it really badly and it’s time to consider changing all that.

The truth is, there is a time limit on time which we are harshly reminded of whenever we hear about the next shocking/senseless death du jour.

Ironically the only way that we can deal with time trauma is to reset our inner clocks by pushing the hands of the clock towards the illusion of a happy tomorrow.

This operates not unlike a woman's biological clock which is built by the clockmakers of the little village of Optimism.

When we are young time moves as languidly as a drowsy river barge or a yawning, arm stretching brand newborn and we live as rich people do: indulgently and self-obsessed because we have all the time in the world.

The entire concept of hurrying and crossing finish lines lives in the faraway shadowland of maturity where grown-ups fret behind closed doors as they convene in ceremonies of worry where they talk in hushed, sometimes frantic voices as they try to negotiate with time and its fast approaching, surefooted inevitability.

Until we arrive at that station of life, time is a measurement like the height notches on a  kitchen doorframe or the lighting of annual birthday candles where we are lauded with gifts and offered the biggest piece of cake for having achieved nothing more than the milestone of time served.  Childhood in many ways is like white collar prison. You are only allowed so much freedom and are always painfully aware of the long list of rules and restrictions.

During that period of confinement, until that bitch homework shows up at our doors, it seems like our heartbeats tick to the tock of all the clocks in the house.  

I remember sitting in my first or second-grade class, staring at the clock at say 9:00 and an hour later looking at it again and it was 9:01.  Whoever came up with the street sign that read, “Slow Children at Play” knew exactly what they were talking about.

It seemed in those days that whatever we did, like being dragged to go clothes shopping or taking a ride in the car to see relatives took more time than Lindbergh’s flight to Paris.  When we acted out in protest in the restless backseat, we were always threatened that if we did not stop dad would turn the car around and what our parents never got is that would have been perfectly fine with us.  That is what we wanted!

The school year was slow, grueling, Papillon-quality torture.  Summer and Christmas took forever to get to.  For kids and Anne Boleyn, a year is a thousand days.

Today things are different because kids have are endlessly left to their own devices and are umbilically connected to video games, pads,  and phones.

Sadly so are tourists and sports stadium spectators.  No one is “there” anymore.  It seems like we have all fallen between the cracks of “now” and live in a kind of limbo state, as in the long ago sixties dance craze, where the bar got lower and lower and lower.

The only times I begged for more time was when I needed more TV or when I was outside in the summer and still trying to play stickball in the dark.  Time to a kid is only important when they want more of something.  Then suddenly time became a highly negotiable, priceless form of currency.

In honor of time, allow me to make a quantum leap, to the point where I am today, a guy with gray hair and long tended to rolling fields of memories which are highlighted with accomplishment and dotted with acres of regrets, who has caught up with time, run with it, only see it pass me by at the speed of Usain Bolt. 

And time shows no sign of slowing down.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Time keeps accelerating at a constant basis.  Now it seems like Christmas was both yesterday and tomorrow.  Vision is not the only thing that gets blurred as you get older.  Life is a lot faster than the last twenty minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Can you imagine a finale like that today?)

Being young, you are an early adopter; a pioneer slowly forging ahead as you traverse one new world after another.   

But when most of your life is a rear view mirror picture show, time ahead seems incredibly limited and out of control.  

Nowadays,  I feel like Sherlock Holmes, charged with having to solve the mystery of time.  Every waking and dreaming moment I search for clues.  For evidence.  For patterns.  It seems like  I’m always sleuthing, trying to figure out what or whodunnit to me. 

There are severe lapses during this ongoing investigation, of course, because we adults, still require toys and are just as plugged into our devices as an errant 10-year-old.  I feel like we are all living in 2018 A. D.D.

Since virtually none of the huge, significant cosmic questions of life will be ever be answered, much of my private eye time is devoted to trying to find something to watch on the satanic menu of Netflix. 

We are bombarded with entertainment choices, with even more streaming services to come from the likes of Disney, Warners, and Apple. 

It’s like we grew up in a light snow shower and now we live in a daily avalanche.

The pursuit of wisdom, which takes a lifetime to achieve, has been replaced by the junkie urge for immediate gratification news which has become the real opioid addiction crisis not just here but all over the world whose web we are compulsively trapped in.

The need for truth has been replaced by the Big Gulp, 7-11 convenience of lies which is nothing more than a shortcut towards an instant conclusion.  Fact has been replaced by a gut response.  At the rate we’re going in the near future a murder trial could take under a minute.  Why even bother deliberating when you know everything?

All people want to do these days is justify the sanctity of their own absolute and unyielding opinion as fast as possible.  We rubber stamp our own based on what little we know declarations at the speed of Max Bialystock selling shares at the end of The Producers.

Being right fast is substantive now.  It’s all that matters.

Most of it, I would postulate, is a product of our times.  Crazy breeds crazy and the need for stability can make even the most stable genius grasp for last straws.

We are all in a hurry now.  All the time. In virtually everything that we do.   

Newspapers by the time that they reach us, are nothing more than printed summaries of what we already know.  Moveable type is so 13th century.

But here is the thing to wonder about.  What the hell are we doing?  Where are we heading and why are we in such a hurry to get there, when we don’t even know where there is?

When I was very young we used to dream with our eyes open, staring at the infinity of nighttime stars and fantasize about the future rapturously like George Bailey dreaming about seeing the world.

Now the past, where memories of civility, decency, and lessons learned, both literally and figuratively reside, have little or no meaning anymore and that is as insulting to time as we can be.

But I promise you, dear reader, there are solutions.

It begins by stopping.  Breathing.  Daydreaming.  By shutting off the frantic, doomsayers and their blathering TV yammer and instead of needing to be right, consider taking the time to feel right.  About yourself.  About others.  About our planet. Think about what your faith is trying to teach you.  Consider that the universal God is the all-knowing, absolute standard that lives in all of us who becomes visible by our actions and every time that we defy the requirements of civility and decency we are turning against ourselves and each other.  At rallies.  On the streets.  In our own homes.

I implore you to take all the eternal time you need to feel that.

Find ways to feel inspired.  Laugh more.  Sing louder.  Dance the second that you feel the need to express joy.

Find things and people to love.

And when you are alone, and loving yourself, consider traveling.

Travel to a whole other dimension. A dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. 

It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone and I highly recommend that you consider going there for extended periods of time on a regular basis.

While you are there, consider playing with time.  Bend it.  Change its appearance.  Defy it.  Embrace it. Negotiate with it. Yield to it.  Conquer it.  Toy with it like Chaplin toyed with the world. Make it work for you.

Before it is gone.