“...unless you can alter time... or teleport me off this rock!"

Time is a funny thing. When you want it to go fast it goes slow, and when you want it to be spent there seems an abundance of it.

I’m heading home tomorrow night for a short, four-day visit with family and friends in my hometown of Kent, Washington. I try to make it back twice a year and it’s been over eight months since my last visit.

"Sorry it’s been so long between visits, I just...”
“It’s been ten years between visits, but—oh, come and give us a squedge.”

All I’ve been able to think about all week long has been how much time I’ve got left before I’m home. I can remember leaving work Monday evening thinking, “one day down, three to go.” Then Tuesday night I thought, “wow, exactly 48 hours from now I’ll be standing on the same hardwood floor I grew up standing on, and I’ll be hugging the same mom I grew up hugging.

My greatest desire in the world right now is for time to flash before me and take me swiftly from this moment directly to the moment I turn the corner to see my dad waiting for me at the Sea-Tac International Airport baggage claim (I expect he’ll probably be wearing his gray slacks and his turquoise-and-white striped shirt). And in perfect contrast with my wish for time to quicken until that moment, I hope that once that moment arrives that time will drag, prolonging the following four days into four weeks.

How is it that I could want two completely different things from something void of both the ability and disposition to oblige me on either account? It reminds me of something Maid Marion told Robin Hood when he mentions his plans for a future home and a family full of love:

"Men speak conveniently of love when it serves their purpose, and when it doesn’t ‘tis a burden to them.”

I feel a lot the same way about time. I can remember moments on my mission when I thought that two long years would never pass and I can remember moments after my mission looking back on it longingly and wondering where those two short years had gone.

This chronological conundrum seems to constantly make victims of us all, but I believe there is a way we can overcome it:

I can remember autumns as a teenager going to football practice day in and day out. I sometimes got so sick of spending so much time on the practice field that I often found myself envious of the kids that weren’t on the team who could just go home after school and spend their afternoon doing whatever they like.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like football practice—I really loved it: some of my fondest memories of youth are of the friendships formed as my teammates and I rallied together to endure both Coach Norris’ conditioning workouts and the stench of middle linebacker, Sean Dolph’s, unwashed practice uniform—its just that I was so tired of the redundancy and the seeming restrictions it put on my free time, that I often found myself chomping at the bit for practice to be over just so I could go home and do whatever I felt like doing.

It wasn’t until about midway through my senior year that I realized that my football career was finite. I had seen the opening sequences of Rudy and I’d watched as two grades’ worth of Kentwood High football players before me walked off the field after their last practice, never to return to strap on a set of shoulder pads again. And for a moment I stepped out of myself and looked on the situation from a third-person perspective. I could see that football was about to end in six short weeks, but that my life would go on for many long years, and the memories of the old man I saw there were the recollections of what my young self was doing today.

It then became my decision as to what sort of memories I would hand down to that old man. Would they be memories of shirked commitments or of persistant determination? I decided then to enjoy every drill, every down, every dog-pile, and every dry heave of every day.

Today, I’m not yet the old man I envisioned, but I am at an age where the only football I participate in is either with food in my hands or flags on my hips, and when I look back on my memories of what it was like to be inside a huddle or under a gang tackle, I can’t help but get emotional—partly out of envy for that young me I watch enjoying each tackle and every touchdown, and partly out of gratitude for that same kid, for looking beyond himself, for taking a selfless moment to think of me, the man he'd grow up to be.

"Well, good luck—for both our sakes. You've made a real difference in my life. See you in the future."
"You mean the past?"
"Exactly."

Take a minute today to look beyond yourself to the you of the future. What sort of memories are you providing for him/her? Are you bitterly wishing that you were where or when you'd choose to be, or are you makeing of that moment something you'll be able to respect and appretiate at a later date? I hope the future memories I'm creating are ones of enjoying myself in whatever or whenever I’m situated, despite how distant it may be from whatever it is that I’m waiting for, because nobody wants to look back on their younger years and realize himself to have been a sourpuss.

“This one for a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away: to the future… to the horizon…never his mind on where he was (hmm?) what he was doing (hmm.)”