07 July 2024 | When the Gift of Time Goes Unnoticed

The end of the road is for everyone (Adobe Stock)

The other day I got to waxing nostalgic (better that than melancholy but it might have been there, too) about how I wish that I had known what a gift time was when I was young. You might want to complain about how school is boring or seems endless, but it’s during that era before you graduate high school that you have the most time in the world available to you. I wish that I had a purpose or goal to work for, but even lacking those, the days ahead may seem so endless because they are.

Not everyone might have a youth fitting that bill, of course, but for me, I might have appreciated the time more fully if I had been aware of it, even in the slightest. You enter into this golden age where no one is sick, no one’s health is starting to fail, and you know that family members are going to be around forever. You have no true conception about the changes that happen, or that this phase is fleeting.

This is not about wanting to change something, necessarily, although it’s easy to wonder if I had done X, what long-term effect might that have had? Rather, I contemplate if the awareness of time could have motivated me differently, if at all. I don’t know if I would have been a better student or a more attentive son, but I am sure *some* change might have registered. As an adult, I still have a lot of time to do things (having no wife and kids will allow that) and I marvel at my continued procrastination, but it’s different as a grown-up. I *know* the days ahead are shorter, unlike in my youth. Due to that, I have more worry about the future. And I have long passed that phase when everyone is all right: it’s now the epoch of doctor appointments, medical tests, and an aging body that tells you how much older you are. And of course, family reunions in the form of funerals.

But you know the phrase: that’s life. It may get you in the end, but you can make the most of the road along the way. Even when you ignored the gift of time when it mattered the most.