Time

On Saturday I spent a good part of the day watching the funeral of Ted Kennedy from the cathedral in Boston to Arlington National Cemetery.  What is it about watching these kinds of events that mesmerizes us, makes us stop and consider our own mortality?  I believe it is the mystery of ‘time’ that gives us pause.  What is time?  It’s definition is as elusive as the definition of gravity or love.  The only way to understand it is to metaphorically characterize it. 

Time is a stream that we are all floating in, going somewhere.  We don’t know where it is taking us, but there is no way to avoid its destination.  We have no control over where we got into the stream, and no idea where we will get out either.  We are just along for the ride, so to speak.  Since we can’t stop it, and we can’t control it, most of us are preoccupied and neurotic about where we have been,( since we can look behind us), and where we think we are going, (which is unknowable for the most part).  What we fail to take note of most of the time (no pun intended) is where we are at any given moment.

Except when something happens to knock us on the head and make us stop our incessant preoccupation with the past and the future, like the death of a major figure like Ted Kennedy, or  Princess Diana, or Tim Russert.  So it was for me on Saturday. 

If we put aside the amazing accomplishments of the man and simply think about him as a person who suddenly became aware that he had limited time, consider the way he chose to experience his remaining time.  We really didn’t know that until this weekend when we heard his family talk about what he did in his remaining months after his diagnosis.  I learned about the character of the man, how he viewed life, how he treasured his family, how he spent his time, what became important to him during these last months of his life….the singalongs, the family dinners, sitting quietly on his porch and smelling the salt air of Hyannisport, being out on the ocean in his sailboat.  What I heard was that the things that were important to him are the same things that are important to all of us in the end…..our families, the people we love, the simple things of beauty in the world around us that we all too often don’t take notice of.  I guess those are the lessons of life that perhaps are the most important ones to learn.

It sounds so cliché to say that we should make the most of every moment, but if we don’t we aren’t really living.  Living is the act of experiencing the moment we are in, whether it is good or bad.  That is life; that is what we are here to do.

I read an article in the New York Times several weeks ago by a zen Buddhist priest named Norman Fischer (born Jewish in Wilkes-Barre, Pa in 1946) about the  meaning of time.  It gave me much to think about, and I offer it to you here..Norman Fischer

My daughter Caitlin said it best a couple of weeks ago when she was home during the summer break before going back to school at UF in Gainesville.  We were talking about this article and she said very matter of factly, “If you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future, you are shitting on the present!”.   How is that for a mental image? 

The fundamental truth of it, though, is inescapable.  We only have the moments that are before us to live our lives.  My biggest challenge is to stay aware of that during every moment I am alive and to live it as it is happening.  Don’t we all feel that way?