Time. You can share it, donate it, commit it, dominate it, sell it and cherish it. It spends all the same, alone or together.
Where were you when 9/11 happened? This is a question that everyone has an answer to because they spent it in that moment of realty with you regardless of where they were and it brought you to a shared moment of emotional connection.
I think of the singular moments I spend alone in time and all the moments I spend, like currency, at big events in time with thousands of people sharing that moment.
Yet, the moment I lived in our big ole house in Iowa, rocking my baby boy in our bedroom. The windows were open with fresh May air making the curtains blow and I had Norah Jones’ CD softly playing. That was such a precious moment in time only I can tell. Perhaps that question would be, Where were you when I was rocking my baby?
Some stories are shared while others are told. It’s fun when they’re told together with different vantage points to season the memorable moments. Like friends who went on a trip or a couple’s reflection on their wedding day.
While rocking my baby and telling myself to always remember this very moment and every detail in it, there was something happening to everyone else at that precise moment of time that I don’t know.
I was thinking about the simplest of moments, like casually talking to your people answering the usual dinnertime question, “How was your day?”
Stories are created simultaneously in moments of time. It’s when we tell our stories, or versions of our highlights or low points of the day through our eyes that the translation from a single person to witness testimony develop even if it’s as basic as how you decided to spend your time today. You create the story and how you want to paint it to others.
Time may be spent based on where you’re obligated to be or obligated to see/do and spend it – work, school, appointments… or, wishingly, how you chose to spend it of your own freewill decisions. Like excess time is excess cash. burn it on the fun stuff you enjoy.
Maybe something happened on the way to work or you caught up on a great book and why. Distracting your time to unproductive consumption. Like the Golden Corral Buffet. You shouldn’t take another click through but it’s just tasting so good. Gotta get your money’s worth.
When my Mark and I lounge about consuming time together, it’s what I imagine melancholy to mean. We lounge and talk about funny, unique, strange, not cool, challenging, interesting aka newsworthy talk about our day, its one of my favorite time spends. I feel bad that I probably share 3:1, or more to his shares which dominates the time, so when he does tell me some things he experienced it’s always funny and worth listening to. I enjoy hearing about his conversations or learnings of new people and things. Thoughts or opinions he’s formed about something he learned that day.
Plus, I can tell when he’s bored of my story hahahahah. I think into things alot and look to him for validation of my case and if my feelings are warranted or based on misplaced emotion.
I think about the stories I tell because in a day there’s so many interactions and I talk in hopes to listen to others tell theirs to me. I often wonder if my topics or points of choice with those people and wheteher or not the conversation of sharing was considered newsworthy after we had the moment, too. Could any of my interactions that day become dinnertime fodder for other people’s table of time sharing?
Funny, interesting and hopefully not cool. I enter every exchange of information optimistically for valued content to be shared, but you never know these days how interpretations are made.
Time.
It’s when we spend it doing what we don’t want to do that is the worst, and based on what it is and how it’s arranged could determine the outcome of health.
For example, if you don’t like your current commitments to receive an income aka career, then you decide what you can stand and go find another.
Sometimes, you may have to spend time doing things you don’t want to do such as exercising, not eating what you wish or raking the leaves but the time enjoy the reward of it makes the investment of time worth it.
We don’t know how much time we have. When we run out of time, its the times we shared with others that are celebrated through resharing the stories.
Perhaps sacrificing unknown quantities of your time end up surprising you and are enjoyable. Then you regret the time you wasted dreading it’s fast approach.
I get so saddened spending time empathizing and imagining the injustice diabolical time abusive people forced to innocent people to do things against their will with their time and further worse, trying to scar future times of joy.
We don’t know when our own individual time runs out. We don’t know when someone else’s time will run out. It’s the same currency each and everyone of us have the exact same amount of.
How are you spending it?
Thanks for reading,
Heather
