A Question of Time
My eleven-year-old grandson was recently expounding on the reasons why, he believes, school days and holidays should be switched. He believes there are too many days when he has to go to school. I can certainly see his point of view. When I was his age, there was no end to the time spent in the classroom.
However, time is an amazing thing. It goes from being painfully slow to racing at the speed of light—or so it seems—in just a few decades. At first it loses its ability to stand still then begins to rush quite dramatically as if pushed by an undisciplined wind. When you’re busy with work and raising a family, there’s never enough time for all you want to do. And when you retire, whether it is a full retirement or you still work part time, you are amazed that there never seems to be enough time to do all the things you want to do, and you wonder how you ever found time to work. But you realize you’re not the only one to see time as an ever changing commodity when you hear your children bemoan the fact that they run out of time.
But seeing time fly by is not all bad. It reminds us that we’d better get busy doing the things we want to do and stop putting them off because as we all know, without warning, time could run out of steam.
The other morning I was leisurely working on shaping my toenails at 8 a.m. when I realized that the demands on my time have changed drastically. When people are going to school or working, 8 a.m. is a time of necessary rushing to catch the bus or the train, or to get in the car to make it on time. When you’re working at home, time priorities are no longer dictated by others. You are the master of your own schedule. Other people no longer impose time restrictions on you unless it is for important appointments like the doctor or the dentist.
The rest of the time you can sleep in when you’ve had trouble falling asleep the night before or when you stayed up to watch an interesting TV program or to work on a hobby. And you can eat when it pleases you, when you’re hungry rather than at the preordained time of a lunch break. Those things I find to be the most welcomed aspects of getting older. Finally, your time is yours, you are the master of your day.
That means that you can indulge in long lunches, you can travel city streets and highways when the traffic is less intense, you can grocery shop on a week-day morning instead of on busy evenings or weekends. And you can shape your toenails at whatever time pleases you. Or, can you?
The fact that your time is your own does not escape your children who feel they can impose on you to sit with the grandkids whenever … a day, or a week. You’re not doing anything important that week are you? they ask. Well, you say, we wanted to take a trip to wherever. You can do that anytime, can’t you? they retort. And since you enjoy spending time with the grandkids, how can you refuse! And so it goes. Doing your own thing at any time is a road with a few bumps, but who’s complaining.
