There Is No Present Like Time

                                                              It’s About Time

                Obviously, New Year’s Eve is a time to reflect on…time…and its passing. How it’s shaped us, and hopefully, we, it. We salute those we lost this past year and make resolutions to try to be better versions of ourselves in the year to follow.

                We have been granted the gift of voice, yet many remain mute. We’re granted the gift of passion, yet many stay passive. We have the ability to tell those we are close to what they mean to us, yet many of us decline to do so. At the end of our lives, if we have squandered time, if we haven’t taken advantage of the gifts of passion and thought and feelings and language that make us different from rock or sand or moss…what have we achieved?

                Don’t squander time of all things, as we are given so little of it. ‘Time is of the essence’ the saying goes. That is technically not true. Time is the essence. What is there without time? Could there be a ‘time before time?’

                It is time for us to speak. It’s time for us to do, to love, to experience new things.

                There is a time for us to be born, to live, to give birth, and to die. Let us make sure that, when it is our time to die, we have truly lived. ‘Time after time’ we here clichés about time. “Does anybody really know what time it is?” Time and again. Time is running out. Time’s up. I don’t have the time. If only I had the time. Halftime.  Bedtime. In the nick of time. Father Time.

                Think about the most important relationship in your life. How has it changed over time? Why? Did you shape it or just let it happen? What have you done with your time…and theirs?

                Let us not just mark time. Let’s mark lives. We need to make a New Year’s resolution that we learn the value of time and appreciate it. Did we make our loved-ones lives better and richer during the immeasurably short time we are here on this planet? Did we do the things that might allow us the opportunity to walk forever with them in a heavenly light?

                Were you granted the ability to love, but remain reserved and distant? Scared? Were you granted the ability to experience joy and pleasure, but refuse to use it? Were you granted the ability to feel pain, but cannot bear to do so?

                It’s about time we show our spouses and loved ones the affection, respect and love they deserve. And we can do that, in part,  by respecting, appreciating and showing gratitude for the little time we have here on Earth.

                Let this shape our here and now, and not our distant future, and act accordingly.

                So, if your spouse snores occasionally, or takes more than his or her ‘fair’ share of the covers, if you don’t like it when they wake you up when coming to bed at night or leaving it in the morning, if you have no ‘time’ for romance…think about when they are gone. That first long, cold, dark night when you crawl over in bed and find that they are not there. And realize that they will never be there again.

                How brutal will that night be, when you reach out and there is no reassuring touch, no breathing, no “it’s okay honey, I’m here and I love you.”

                So the logical thing to do, the moral thing to do, is to act now how you would if, after that brutal, long, cold, dark night, you awoke to find your spouse next to you in the morning and realized you had just had a bad dream.  

               Because, one day, all too soon, it will not have been a  dream.                                               

                I myself have a couple of New Year’s resolutions this year,  but perhaps  our most important New Year’s resolution should be to fully realize how precious little time we have here in this life and to treat our loved ones accordingly.

                There’s no time like the present.
     
                And there is no present (gift) like time.

                                                          **********************

                                                              Happy New Year, All!

                                                          **********************

( Following are the lyrics to a poignant Dan Fogelberg song, appropriate, I think, to this date and this post. NEVER let it be the “Same Old Lang Syne” in your life).

                                                            Same Old Lang Syne

Met my old lover in the grocery store
The snow was falling Christmas Eve
I stood behind her in the frozen foods
And I touched her on the sleeve

She didn't recognize the face at first
But then her eyes flew open wide
She went to hug me and she spilled her purse
And we laughed until we cried

We took her groceries to the check out stand
The food was totaled up and bagged
We stood there lost in our embarrassment
As the conversation lagged

We went to have ourselves a drink or two
But couldn't find an open bar
We bought a six-pack at the liquor store
And we drank it in her car

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
We tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how

She said she's married her an architect
Who kept her warm and safe and dry
She would have liked to say she loved the man
But she didn't like to lie

I said the years had been a friend to her
And that her eyes were still as blue
But in those eyes I wasn't sure if I saw
Doubt or gratitude

She said she saw me in the record stores
And that I must be doing well
I said the audience was heavenly
But the traveling was Hell

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
We tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to time
Reliving, in our eloquence
Another "Auld Lang Syne"

The beer was empty and our tongues were tired
And running out of things to say
She gave a kiss to me as I got out
And I watched her drive away

Just for a moment I was back at school
And felt that old familiar pain
And, as I turned to make my way back home
The snow turned into rain

Songwriters: Fogelberg, Dan

Same Old Lang Syne lyrics © EMI Music Publishing