Qualities of time

I am sure you noticed how time passes too quickly these days.  Unless it is just a matter of my growing older or having so many things to do at the same  time but I always seem to lack time to complete all the things I have planned to do.  Perhaps it is also because I have packed my schedule so much and may have avoided putting in some slack. 

A former boss, mentor and friend, Orlando Abelgas used to tell me to include lazy days in my calendar.  What wisdom indeed when I see that  I start the day sometimes just staring out my window at 1521 trying to see how I can manage the day by watching the cars weave their way in an often busy street and finding meaning in a small  vehicle’s ability to inveigle its way into the mainstream.  Subconsciously, my day picks up from there and the next thing I know when I watch the cars again from the same window, the sky has changed its hue and lights begin to line the highway.

Time really goes unnoticed for the busy.

So I thought.

Then when I had time in my hands, or so I thought, for the sudden break I had to take for the caring of my Dad, I noted how time passed still, too quickly. We would wake up to the sun streaming on our faces.  Not that we got a wink at all for Dad required full attention.  We just got a new perspective of how time wouldn’t hold still and how each sunshine signified a new day.  Another day spent.

Maybe our not catching much sleep in our watch was our way of hoping that time would give us more of Dad’s presence in his counted days.  A few more embraces, funny talks and bantering in between breathes. Snuggles took the place of our normal lap sitting which was even at 40, my favorite way of telling Dad that his little girl was still there.  Smelling Dad in his crisp pajamas was like savoring childhood again when he would carry me to bed when I would sleep in the sala.  Time too short. Curtailed by deadlines of humanity.  That is the quality of time we have.  It has deadlines of humanity and how we spend the moments we have has to be a conscious effort, a recognition of the limits of our selves and how we have really savored each borrowed  second.

My realizations have set aside all the things I learned in management school on how to approach time.  There really is only one way.  And it is to take each day at a time.  The way the Lord said.  The way His mercies are given each morning. One at a time.

Steven Covey has said that we follow the principle of “first things first” and goes ahead with  sharing the time quadrant that demonstrates how time can be used to the hilt.  No time wasted. Why plan things one at a time?  So each moment is taken with the qualities of its own.

I read once that we have always been worrying about yesterday and wondering about tomorrow that we fail to live in the “today” of our lives.  That is why we worry again the next day because we never really experienced the previous “today”.

Having this in mind, I see time as music, the silent strum of strings as I drive myself to work.  Time is the meetings I have and the little gestures I note in a persons face as I take in the color of the room and its scent.  Time are the thoughts I have when I start my work and segregate each activity so I would hopefully not miss anything.  Time is what I spend wishing that I could have the coffees,  and kick-off-your-shoes instances with friends I have not been able to be with.  Time is more than reports and presentations and meetings.  It includes the nuances of the voices and actuations of the body when at the negotiation.  Time embodies all our priorities and shows us what we really are made of…who we are.

The qualities of time reveal its shortness.  Its usefulness.  Its meaning.  Its legacy.

Our use of time is like the “birds of the same feather flocking together.”  The results of the time we use, the deals we win or lose and the relationships we keep or let go reveal the essence of our being.  With the quickness of how it passes, we must not live life in a blur or in the haze of smoke that give vent to trapped thoughts and unexpressed emotions.

There are better ways to live and use time.