Be at Peace with the Passage of Time

How memory, mindfulness, and imagination can help us embrace life’s changes without resistance or regret.

In August of ‘95, I was just weeks from beginning my freshman year of college, working my final days of summer employment in a manufacturing plant. One afternoon, the weather service issued a heat advisory. Outside, the mercury was pushing triple digits. Inside the warehouse, it was difficult to breathe.

My job for the day was inventory—specifically, counting a bunch of green plastic trays nested together in stacks. There were hundreds to a stack, dozens of stacks in a box, several boxes on a pallet, and pallets as far as the eye could see. I wanted nothing more than to get out of there immediately—to spend as much time as possible with my childhood friends before we were scattered by college and forced to find belonging all over again.

I checked the clock on the wall repeatedly, and it was fresh torture each time I saw only a minute or two had passed. So I resolved not to check again until I was certain at least an hour had gone by. When I guessed it to be seventy-five minutes later, I glanced at the clock.

Twelve minutes had passed.

The best way to make time go slowly is to wish it would go quickly.

Almost four years later, on the eve of college graduation, I found myself sitting in a booth with my best friend at our favorite pub on campus. We’d been randomly paired up as freshman roommates, and we’d remained roommates all four years. We had crossed the chasm from childhood to adulthood together, but now he was going off to law school at Marquette, and I was going off to grad school at Penn State.

As we sat there stoically, trying to be tough like dudes, the song on the jukebox drove home the finality of the moment. Green Day sang,

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road

Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why

It’s not a question just another lesson learned in time.

We wanted that final night on campus to last forever which, of course, was like hitting the fast-forward button.

The things we want to last the longest are the things that flash by the fastest.

My son is now on the verge of his own college years. For months, he has actively resisted thinking about it altogether. I know why. I remember. He too loves the friendships he’s found in his childhood. He’s not ready to let go of his belonging. However, it’s now spring of his junior year.

Which means it’s time for the releasing to begin.

So, we’re spending spring break touring colleges when, on a campus in Nashville, listening to our tour guide, it starts to happen. The sun is shining. The dogwoods are blooming. The grass is greening. As the tour guide reveals that any student can buy food anywhere on campus whenever they want, I can feel a shift in the energy of the young man I love as fiercely as I’ve ever loved anyone. He can picture himself in this place.

His heart is opening to college.

As he opens, I realize how much his resistance to leaving has allowed me to pretend he never will. With that imaginary barrier suddenly removed, I can sense how quickly this next year is going to go. I’m going to wish for time to stop altogether and, as I try to wrestle it to a standstill, it will take off at a gallop.

My boy will be gone before I know it.

I have always closed my heart to the passage of time. I’ve gotten angry at it. I’ve treated it like a tyrant, or worse: a tormenter who actively resists my every wish. However, for the last few years, I’ve vowed to be done with closing my heart to anything. So, standing there in the spring sunlight, with my son’s heart opening to college, I open my heart to time, and this is what I see:

Time is neither our tormentor nor a tyrant, it's our tour guide.

Time is simply our escort, ushering us from one location to another in this life. We’re not in competition with it, we’re in participation with it.

For instance, just before we left home for the college tours, I heard my daughter humming a song under her breath. I recognized the tune.

“Do you know what song that is?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she shrugged, “it’s from the movie Sing.”

“Not originally,” I said, reaching for my phone.

I played the song on the house speakers. “Jump” by Van Halen. And its opening synth notes were like a time-machine.

I was standing in my living room with my fifteen-year-old daughter, and I was a ten-year-old boy, watching a Cubs game on a summer afternoon, before they had lights at Wrigley. “Jump” was the team’s theme song at the time. I was inhabiting two points in time at once. Thanks to our uniquely human minds, we’re not trapped in time like animals; we can travel through it like gods.

• Memory allows us to travel backward in time.

• Mindfulness empowers us to be present to this moment in time.

• Imagination frees us to move forward in time.

Memory. Mindfulness. Imagination. Together, they allow us to cherish what was, to fully experience what is, and to foresee what we will lose so we can love it all the more while we can.

We can’t control the pace of time, but we can be at peace with its passage.

As the tour guide leads us to our next location on campus,

I can feel time leading our family to our next location in life,

and instead of loathing it,

I let myself love it.

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• Does this post help you to open your heart to the passage of time, or do you feel yourself closing to it? What other reactions do you have to it? Feel free to share in the comments, and I’ll be sure to reply!

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