There are different ways of looking at time. I can consider the task of a work week. I can look at my calender for the month. Each year has some kind of demarcation to it, with the cycle of anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays.
I can take it to a finer level of detail. How will I use the 45 minutes a class of students will spend in my room? Taking attendance, giving directions, providing opportunity for them to explore unplanned ideas.
I can obsess about getting stuck in traffic - adding 5-15 minutes to a daily commute, which can matter if I am cutting things close on my arrival for a specific responsibility. Or I can use that same time to let go and reflect.
Monday is a significant demarcation for me. It used to be the age at which most people retire, 65, although I shall not. On a smaller scale, since the last external deliverable for my students is a state test tomorrow, it begins a different part of the school year, when I introduce them to their final projects, which tend to unleash their creative juices and I begin to really see what they have learned and can do.
It will also represent a new start. Perhaps that seems odd, as I am not retiring at the end of this year. And yet each birthday seems as if it is yet another opportunity.
To look forward, I must reflect backwards.
Again I do so today. Reflecting on time in its many elements.
The Mount Vernon clock on the wall by livingroom provides an audible indication of the passing of time. When it rings it reminds me that I need to adjust it, as it is now somewhat slow, losing perhaps 45 seconds a day. That reminds me that the clock in my room has never been reset by the custodial staff, either after we went to daylight savings or after the recent 7 minute power failure. By now all of us, myself and students, know that it is 67 minutes slow, read it, and can adjust accordingly. We fight a hopeless battle with our students, who no longer wear watches but use their cell phones - not supposed to be on - to check the passage of time, as if they do not trust the clocks and buzzers in the school.
I periodically glance at the upper right of the computer screen to see if my sense of time is accurate. It usually is, and yet I like my students can obsess over the passage of time when I am engaged in some activity for which I may have a limited amount of time. As an athlete and as a coach time is often important. When I ran cross-country it was matching the passage of time to the distance run and left to be run. In soccer it is the inexorable passage of the period versus the status of the score: if ahead one wanted the time to run more swiftly, if behind to stretch it out.
And in life? When I was younger time seemed to pass too slowly as I waited for forthcoming events that seemed to bear great possibilities. Now? It is not so much that I realize how old I am becoming. I do not need another birthday to remind me that I tire more easily, need more sleep. It is that time seems to be accelerating, with things going by at an ever increased pace.
At the end of next month we will have lived in this house for 27 years. It would be nice were we still on the original mortgage, which would then be almost paid off, but that is a separate issue. Rather I have to think about how long I lived elsewhere. The second longest was the house in which I grew up, 1 Huguenot Drive, Larchmont NY. We move there in the fall of 1948. Officially it was our residence until my dad remarried after my mother's death and moved to East 56th St in NYC in April of 1964, but for me it ceased being my home when I went to Haverford in September, 1963. Either way - 15.5 or 16.5 years is still significantly less than 27.
Similarly, I am completing my 9th consecutive year at my school, the 12th in the last 13. Whether I date my tenure from my arrival in 1998 - 13 years - or from my return in 2002 - 9 years, my next longest job was in Arlington Count Government. I have to think back. It, too, had two spans. I came for 18 months, left for 12 months, and returned for 7 years.. We moved into this house during the period between those two stints.
Or I can consider life another way. My relationship with Leaves on the Current began in September of 1974. We married in December of 1985.
I am older, grayer, heavier. In some ways I can consider the words just written and see myself as "settled" as my life rushes by ever more quickly.
Yet I am not settled. Oh, I know I finally as I neared 50 found my principal calling as a teacher. I have no plans to change relationships, or again to wander religiously - that is a story of an exploration that is still not complete.
Time seems to have a different quality to it, and not just in the seemingly different rate in which it passes by.
Now I know I cannot do all I might want. A few years back that concerned me - I might worry that if I were not focused I might not be able to accomplish things of importance. Now I don't worry - I know there will be many things I will not achieve, but I can take some satisfication in things perhaps smaller. The cat who just curled up next to me purring. The student who finally does all his assignments for one week. The weeds I finally clear from the patio. A piece of music that I finally listen to with full attention.
Small things, perhaps. Yet important. Just as each student I am able to reach or help is important.
The words I write? Perhaps not so important, except that i have learned that I often write to help myself understand, and in sharing that process occasionally it is of service to others.
Counting today, there are four days left in this my 65th year. Now I could obsess and wonder if those who insist the Rapture will come in two are right, but then since I know I don't meet their standards - and don't believe that theirs is an accurate interpretation of either Biblical material or the Mayan calendar - I still expect to be here and to see them, all of us still clothed. And if I am wrong and it occurs, I still expect to be here, because for the rest of us we are supposed to have another 6 months, are we not?
Silliness aside, I will try to take time to just be. I will also take time to do. Yesterday I led an important if contentious meeting of a significant number of faculty members very upset at something in our school. Afterward a number of people thanked me for the meeting. Which would be nice if it ended there, but it gives me an additional groups of tasks I must do which will not be pleasant but which will be necessary.
This afternoon I will meet with the chief of staff and LA for education of a Member of Congress, then my wife and I head to a dinner of old friends, at the home of couple we have known for decades who are shortly moving to the midwest to be near their daughter and grandchild.
On Sunday I get to write on behalf of Brothers and Sisters.
And on Monday? Who knows what my students my decide to do - they have found out it is my 65th birthday. Perhaps it will be balloon. Perhaps it will be teasing.
I have four days in which life goes on. I have one day before the state exam I must administer. Many students will be out for other testing today. My school day is thus unplanned, and undefined, except for the passage of time in 45 minute increments separated by 5 minutes between classes.
If I were to count seconds, and were I to consider each year as 365.25 days, 65 years = something over 34 million seconds.
But time has other dimensions as well.
How long is the enjoyment of a piece of music? Is it only while it is playing, or if we allow it does it continue beyond that? Yesterday in four of my classes we commemorated the death of Mahler. It took perhaps 4 minutes to set the context, then about 12 minutes to listen to the Adagietto of the 5th Symphony. Call it 17 minutes, or if you will 1020 seconds for each of those periods, 4,080 for all four. Perhaps in infinitesimal portion of a life, in the eyes of some too much of the limited time for instruction. Except class is not really for instruction, but for learning, is it not? For some hearing a brief selection from Mahler could be life changing, for the rest it might at least expand some possibilities. One young man asked me at the end to spell the composer's name, and to give me the title of the piece.
Expand some possibilities. As life rushes by, some possibilities vanish with the passage of time. Long ago I learned I would not make my living from sports or from music, although I stayed connected with both in different ways, even earning some additional money from both. I coached and refereed soccer. I have conducted church choirs and did musical direction for musical theater in college and as a teacher.
Whatever fleeting dreams i ever had of a life in elected office disappeared long ago. Yet I have participated in helping others achieve that goal, and as a teacher have now seen my former students run for public office and serve in high ranking positions in campaigns and in governmental offices in local, state, and federal government.
I may have dreamt of raising children. That has not happened. Yet in not having responsibility for children of my own I have been able to give more of myself to the many young people who pass through my care in my classroom and elsewhere in school.
I remember a song from the Stones. Not that I necessarily remember it for its intended meaning, but in how it has changed my understanding in another way.
Time is on my side
For me? I have come to learn that despite my often too great impatience about things of small importance, time is not my enemy, but my friend. It prods me to move on, even as it gives me opportunity again and again to experience, to fix things, to enjoy.
Parker Palmer in one of his books talks about going to an older woman known as a Quaker sage for some guidance. He was trying to make a decision. In Friends' terminology, he was trying to find a "way opening" - a clear indication of a path to follow.
He writes that his heart fell heavily when at first she told him that she had never experienced "way opening." But then she continued to tell him that she often experienced "way closing" which could serve the same purpose. It made it clear to one that the path one sought to follow was no longer possible, so it was time to reorient oneself in a different direction. Palmer found that idea liberating.
Perhaps as a result of my own religious peregrination I can put it another way. It is not that God tells us what to do. In fact, given the freedom we have, God can work with whatever we choose. But occasionally God - or if you prefer, life - presents us with an obstacle the prevents us from following a path we thought we should travel. At that moment we have an opportunity to turn around, not to travel so blindly, and discover new possibilities we might otherwise not have considered.
It is in this way that Time is my friend, not my enemy. If something is no longer possible because of the passage of time - either because of my age or because of some deadline I do not control - it can be liberating if I let it be. I no longer need to devote energy - and time - to that, and am free to see in what other direction I can now go.
Life remains full of possibilities, even as I age. I am grayer. The hair is thinner. The weight stays on longer. I tire more easily. I sometimes have to think more carefully about what I do. And in that more careful thinking I notice things I might otherwise have taken for granted, or perhaps not even noticed.
It is not that I am wiser. I do not know how to make such value judgments. I am different. And that difference can be enriching, enlivening, if I let it.
Time is on my side, yes it is
Shortly I will shower, get dressed, pack a lunch, head to DC to drop off my wife and then out to school.
I can never know for sure what will happen once i step out my door. I may need to change my route because of traffic. Perhaps as I drive I will hear something on the news that changes what I plan to do in my classroom. Or a student brings up something that reshapes not only that class, but the rest of my day.
It is another day.
It is another chance to learn, to experience.
It is another day of a life that continues to surprise me.
By the seconds and minutes and hours, to be sure.
By measures of time without end sometimes compressed into a moment that is infinite. Or as Blake put it
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour
It is 7 AM. A measure of time. A repetition of a cycle. An entirely new moment that is unique yet connected.
It is time and timeless.
It is life.
I am lucky.
Peace.